


we are all cinders from a fire burning long ago

by samyazaz



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Snow White Fusion, Based On a D&D Game, Don’t copy to another site, Families of Choice, Final Battle, Magic, Mild Gore, Multi, Mutual Pining, One of My Favorites, Original D&D Character(s) - Freeform, Polyamory, Self-Esteem Issues, Threesome - F/F/M, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 23:31:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 142,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17497436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samyazaz/pseuds/samyazaz
Summary: There is an all-too-familiar restlessness in Quil, a buzzing under her skin like the tense energy of bees disturbed in the nest, readying to spill out in a furious cloud. She breathes through it, like she always does; moves carefully, like she always does; eats at the king's table with her head bowed and demure, with the delicate precision required of her as a ward of Seath's court, like she always does.It doesn't help. She knows it won't. She does it anyway. What choice does she have?





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic based on a D&D game I played with my friends, but doesn't require any prior knowledge of the characters or the campaign. You can easily read this as a standalone fantasy romance novel vaguely based on Snow White with some D&D mechanics!
> 
> **Content Notes:** This is a Snow White AU, which means there is an emotionally abusive guardian who moves on to trying to kill his ward in increasingly brutal ways, and several near deaths. On top of that, there is accidental self-harm and harm of others, dangerous survival situations, self-sacrifice, graphic violence and major character injury, mild gore, brief mind control in the form of intelligence drain, and a hell of a lot of self-loathing.

There is an all-too-familiar restlessness in Quil, a buzzing under her skin like the tense energy of bees disturbed in the nest, readying to spill out in a furious cloud. She breathes through it, like she always does; moves carefully, like she always does; eats at the king's table with her head bowed and demure, with the delicate precision required of her as a ward of Seath's court, like she always does.

It doesn't help. She knows it won't. She does it anyway. What choice does she have?

Supper is as much of an ordeal as it always is. She says little, speaks only when addressed directly and then in as few words as possible. Seath scowls at her when the dessert course is brought out and everyone else is preoccupied oohing and ahhing over his kitchen's confectionary creations, when he thinks no one will be looking to notice. She's meant to smile, to charm, to be displayed like a jewel on his crown, a living demonstration of Seath's generosity and benevolence, the orphaned tiefling he took in and sheltered when no one else would, when anyone else would have shied away from the demonic blood so prominently displayed in her fire-red skin, her coal-black hair, her ember-gold eyes.

She smiles like everyone else in the great hall, and applauds the dessert's artistry like everyone else, and pretends to be as preoccupied as the rest of them, and to not see his glare. And when the dessert course is finished and the first courtiers begin to rise and excuse themselves from the furthest tables, she rises as well and murmurs her own excuse, pleading an unsettled stomach just loudly enough that those at their table can hear, and Seath cannot bid her to stay without seeming unkind to the eyes that watch them both.

There is nothing approaching kindness in King Seath, but it is an illusion he works hard to foster. And so he smiles a tight smile and looks at her with fury in his eyes, and says that of course, she should retire to her rooms and rest, and that he'll send a cleric up once she's had a moment to get settled, to see to her and ensure she feels better.

He will not, but they are the only two at the table who know it to be a lie, and so Quil smiles and dips her head in deference and murmurs how courteous he is, and leaves before he can come up with an excuse that will make her stay while still seeming a kindness to everyone else.

She hurries just as soon as she's out of sight of the great hall, her skirts sweeping out behind her, and swings the door of her bedchamber shut fast, as though its strength and solidity can keep him from her.

She knows it cannot. But it feels reassuring all the same to have it shut behind her, a false comfort but a comfort all the same.

She smooths her skirts carefully beneath her and sits in the narrow chair her room has been furnished with and spends a quarter hour just breathing, just trying to remember how to do so carefully and evenly. The restless buzzing beneath her skin is worse. It sounds in her mind like a deafening roar, drowning out everything else.

Perhaps, she thinks. Perhaps he won't come. Perhaps she'll fall asleep in this chair waiting for him, and wake in the morning with a crick in her neck and the relief of realizing he never darkened her doorway and she won't have to face him until breakfast, when there will be other courtiers around and their eyes on them, keeping him kind, or at least feigning it.

When her breathing has steadied, she turn her chair toward the desk, dips her pen in the ink and begins to write a letter. _Dear Mama_ , she writes, and her hand trembles hard enough to spatter ink across the parchment.

It doesn't matter, she tells herself, ruthlessly stern. It's only going to end up in her hearth like the others, a dusting of ash across what's already there. It's only to give herself something to do besides work herself up into a state while she waits. It doesn't matter. She makes herself continue.

It's nothing like a soothing task, but she knows this restlessness too well, and knows there's no soothing it. There's only waiting it out, hoping for the best. There's only trying to outlast it.

She's filled three pages and her hands are shaking too hard to control when there's a sound behind her, the scrape and whisper of her chamber door opening. She straightens her spine and lays her quill down across the paper. Her jaw is tight and she doesn't turn around. Let him come to her. Let him be the one to speak first. She won't give him the satisfaction.

"How is your stomach, my dear?"

A laugh nearly bursts from her. She squashes it down and lays her hands on the desk's surface, fingers splayed wide, red skin on white parchment on amber wood grain. "Much the same," she says. She doesn't turn.

"Then we will be direct tonight, so you may rest." A chair scrapes. Fabric sighs and settles. She shuts her eyes while her back is still to him and mouths a silent curse. "You know what I'd have of you."

She swallows down the bile in her throat, puts from her mind the screaming itch beneath her skin, and turns to face him. He's sitting in the room's other chair, finer and certainly more comfortable than hers, but she'll never sit in it. Her stomach turns at the thought. "I cannot," she says.

She should defer, even here. He is her king, after all. She should call him _your Majesty_ , should say _I regret to inform you_ if she's going to insist on denying him.

They played such games, when he first brought her to his court, but they're long past them now. Here, in the privacy of her own chamber, she gives him no title and he demands none from her. He has other demands to concern himself with, besides: a crystal held out to her as though on offer, cupped in the palm of his hand, as blue as the sea under a summer sky.

"You will try. You have powerful magics in you, Quil, my diviners have seen it." He extends the crystal closer to her. "You will succeed. If not tonight, then tomorrow, or the day after. I have every confidence in you."

The horrible urge to laugh rises up in her once more. He speaks like he thinks she needs bolstering, as though her objections are only due to lack of confidence in her own abilities. He thinks she thinks she doesn't have enough magic to do it.

Quil knows she does. It's the magic prickling under her skin, after all, pushing against its boundary and searching for release. She knows there's enough of it in her to do what he wants. But he thinks her magic is like an ewer of water, simple enough to pour out only the precise amount desired and set the rest aside for later. He doesn't know the restlessness building inside her, the furious insect scream of it. If she allows even the smallest of opportunities, the whole hive will come pouring through, and there'll be no forcing the swarm back inside once it's out.

Still, she can only refuse him so directly without risking his wrath. For all his pretenses before the rest of the court, she knows there's only one reason he bothers to keep her here, to feed and clothe her and claim her as a ward, and it's sitting there in the palm of his hand, a pitcher waiting for her to fill with her magic, a vessel he has no idea is far too small to possibly contain what's within her.

She takes the crystal from his hand, braced for the way it makes her magic rage and batter against the thin boundary of her skin. Sweat beads on her brow from the effort of keeping it controlled, and her hand trembles, and Seath looks at her with manufactured sympathy because he thinks she's trying to fill it and coming up empty.

The truth is that it takes everything within her to hold her magic back. It yearns to come spilling out of her, to fill the crystal until it shatters and bursts, to fill the room and Seath's palace and the city beyond its walls.

Sometimes, when her strength falters and the magic slips free of her, her hair has turned as blue as the crystal in her hand, and she's had to sneak out of palace to find a cleric willing to fix it for her and willing to be bribed into silence, before Seath sees what has happened and realizes what it means. Sometimes her vision wavers and she finds herself shying around shadowy figures in the palace halls, shapes that no one else reacts to and that make her wonder if she's going mad. Once she found that when she tried to speak, only bubbles came from her mouth instead of words, fat pink shiny things that drifted on the air and only released her voice from them when they burst.

And sometimes, people near her fall ill, for no reason at all. Sometimes lightning crackles around her and her hair lifts from the static charge, as though she were standing in the middle of a thunderstorm. Sometimes people are hurt. Sometimes people die.

Someday, she fears, it's going to be her. Someday, she knows, it might be someone she loves.

And so she stays here in Seath's palace, his prisoner even if that's not the name he's given it, where she cares for no one around her and the heavy stone walls might, she prays, be thick enough to contain the worst of her magic. And so every night when Seath comes to her and bids her to pour her magic out for him, she sweats and strains to keep it contained instead, and lets him think that she's spending the effort to try to manifest what he wants of her. And every night she wonders when the tipping point will come, when her magic will slip her grasp where Seath can see and he'll know what she has inside her, and then instead of treating her like an ewer he'll see her as a natural spring instead, a font of magic bubbling up for him to drink at until he's had his fill.

If she's lucky, whatever the magic manifests as it whips loose about them will kill her before he has the chance to drain her dry. If she's very lucky, it'll kill them both.

But not tonight. Tonight, she feels the humming energy inside her push closer to her skin and she shoves the crystal back into Seath's hands and wrenches hers away, gasping, nearly bent double in her chair. "I can't," she says between great, gulping breaths, shaking her head wildly. "I _can't_. You ask too much of me."

Seath's mouth thins, his pretense gone, only frustrated displeasure left when he looks at her, no hint of even a veneer of benevolence. He rises to his feet, fingers wrapped tight around the crystal until his knuckles have gone bloodless and pale. His words, when he speaks, are clipped with scarcely-restrained temper. "Rest," he tells her, and there's nothing like kindness in the command. "Settle your stomach. I expect you to try harder tomorrow."

He sweeps out before Quil can respond. She wouldn't have had anything to say to him, even if he'd waited for it. She shuts her eyes at the sound of the door thudding shut behind him and presses the backs of her fingers to her mouth, fighting back the wave of nausea threatening to rise up from within her.

Her letter is half-finished on the desk. When she thinks she can move without her skin cracking and letting all the roiling, riotous magic inside her spill free, she rises and takes the pages from the desk and tosses them into the fire, watches them curl and char and fall to ash. And then she climbs into bed, feeling as though even that much movement is an effort, and drags the blankets over her head and waits, breathing in the dark, for sleep to come.

*

The next day, Seath smiles at her across the breakfast table, sickly sweet. "How are you feeling, my dear?"

There's no point in saying that her stomach still troubles her. It won't keep him from her, and won't keep him from making his demands. It'll only irritate him, so she only says, light and even, "Much better today, your Majesty. I thank you for your concern," and finds an excuse to leave the great hall as soon as she's able.

Her magic is no less restless than the day before. It still pushes at her skin, yearning for freedom. She still feels as though every movement might set it free. But she's practiced, now, at moving all the same, at gliding through palace life with the serene expression expected of her and giving away nothing that might hint at the turmoil within her.

He doesn't approach her during the day. She doesn't truly expect him to, but she's braced for it all the same. As evening nears and she's seen nothing of him but brief glances in the great hall at meals, she knows that he'll return to her tonight, and she knows that her control of her magic is more precarious than it has ever been. The thought of taking that crystal from him, of trying to hold her magic back from rushing to fill it, makes her queasy just to contemplate. And so, as evening nears and dinner draws close and she contemplates the next few hours, that seem like they have already been written for her, and how they'll shape the rest of her future, she finds herself frozen in the hallways of the palace, everything in her except her magic revolting at the thought of going to supper and sitting beside Seath and waiting for him to come to her in her chamber that night.

She turns, her breath coming quick in her lungs, and heads down the wrong corridor, away from the great hall.

Oh, she's going to pay for it, and dearly. Seath's fury will gather like thunderclouds, heavy and dangerous, but it's a storm she won't have to face until tomorrow, and maybe tomorrow the restlessness under her skin will have settled. Maybe tomorrow she will be able to wrap a fist around her magic and hold it tight, and keep it in place.

Maybe not. But tonight, she knows she can't, and so she flees.

The halls, at least, are mostly empty, nearly everyone already making their way towards supper. A few servants sidle to the side and blink at her, wide-eyed, as she rushes by, but there's no one to stop her, and by the time she bursts out into the palace courtyard and the cool night air, there's no one around at all to see where she's gone, no one who might tell Seath where to find her in the hopes of placating their king's temper.

There are some lanterns here in the courtyard, casting golden light to illumine paths and the clusters of flowerbeds and statuaries that are fragrant or decorative enough to still be enjoyed as evening wanes and night deepens. But there are broad stretches of shadow between the lanterns, and it's easy enough for Quil to slip into those, to duck between trees and behind bushes and to keep out of sight of anyone who might be inclined to drag her back to her duty.

Quickly enough, she finds her way to a bench, tucked out of the way and angled to best appreciate a small copse of trees that have been planted around it in such a way that, in a quiet moment, if one sits in the right spot on the bench, there's nothing but greenery to be seen and one might, just perhaps, imagine that one is out in the middle of an idyllic countryside, instead of the middle of a bustling palace situated in the middle of a crowded city with stone walls and cobbled streets all around.

Quil sits there now, and it's not full night but even so, it's grown dark enough that she'd hardly even need the carefully-positioned trees to mask the palace around her. The shadows do that well enough.

It's not a very heavily-used part of the courtyard. Quil thinks maybe the others haven't discovered the trick of it, how you have to sit in exactly the right place in order for the trunk of one tree to overlap the branches of another and shield from view the heavy grey stone walls beyond them. She can't imagine why else there wouldn't be half a dozen palace residents and servants all jockeying to sit and breathe in the greenery at any given moment. But she's grateful for it all the same, to have one place in the palace she can reliably escape to. And tonight, she's particularly glad for the dense ring of greenery around her, for as much as they shield anyone within from seeing the stone walls beyond, she knows that they'll likewise shield her from the view of anyone beyond their bounds. If she's lucky, if Seath's anger doesn't reach far enough to bid them search the grounds for her too thoroughly, she can stay there for hours and remain undiscovered, and sneak back to her chamber to sleep once Seath's rage has burned itself out.

She sits there for a time, listening to the sigh of the wind through the trees and the droning chirp of insects rising up in song around her. Her magic still thrums against her skin, like it wants to erupt free and join in the chorus, but she feels centered here, stronger, better able to control it, or at least better able to bear the strain of doing so. In a few months the trees will bear fruit, sweet and decadent, but for now they're thick with blossoms, and she breathes deep and lets the sweet perfume of the blooms fill her lungs, and steady her heart.

It's only because she is so very still and so very quiet that she hears it, a quiet sound like the snap of a twig underfoot. Her eyes fly open but she stays very, very still, straining to hear any more or to see who might have come close enough to her to chance discovering her.

There's a shape moving through the trees and the bushes, little more than a shadow, moving the way she had done scarcely an hour ago, like it doesn't want to be seen. Instead of fleeing the palace, though, it's heading towards it, and Quil's magic surges like a tide and presses hard against her skin at the same time as her pulse quickens.

She steps out from the middle of her little copse of trees, behind the shadowy figure, and moves with light steps behind as it makes towards the door that leads back inside the palace. It's the last place in the world Quil wants to be, but the shadowed shape heads straight for it. Halfway there it must pass through the edge of one of the lanterns' circles of light, and suddenly the shadow is a man, dressed in dark clothes, moving low and swift, swallowed up again by the shadows just as quickly as he left it.

She's not far from him, and if there were anyone around to see her, they'd have seen him too, and raised an alarm. So she stops caring about keeping quiet, stops avoiding the light, and she hurries instead to close the distance between them.

He's nearly at the door, and she's nearly close enough to reach him, when at once he changes direction, whips around and suddenly there's a hand on her mouth and the sharp threat of a blade at her throat, the palace's stone walls cold and coarse against her back. She blinks, wide-eyed, at the man as he pins her in place and she struggles, not because she fears the blade but because her magic stirs and quickens at the threat and she knows she doesn't have the strength to keep it contained.

"Who are you?" he demands in a low hiss. His gaze sweeps over her, and then his brows gather up into a frown. He hesitates, just for an instant. "You're not a soldier," he says, and where a moment before he had sounded just as dangerous as the dagger pressed to her throat, now he sounds uncertain, unsure. The pressure of his hand across her mouth loosens, just enough that she can wrench her head to the side.

"Let me go," she gasps, desperate, babbling. Her hands come up, fingers scrabbling at his wrists, trying to push him back though he's as immovable as the stone wall at her back. "Please, you have to, I can't-- Let me go, let go of me, _please--_ "

"Gods," he breathes, and shakes his head. He pushes back from her a little, putting inches between them, but he doesn't let go and Quil's magic beats against her, battering for freedom. "What are you, a servant? No," he corrects himself almost at once, before she can say anything. "You're dressed too fine for that. But not a courtier either." That one isn't a question. "Who are you?"

"Please," she sobs and shoves at him futilely. "You don't understand, _please._ "

"I'm not going to hurt you," he says, low, gentle, like he's trying to calm a skittish horse. If she were the palace maid or serving girl he'd thought she was, maybe it would have been as soothing as he intended it to be. But he's still touching her, and he doesn't understand. He thinks she's afraid that _he'll_ hurt _her_.

She can feel the magic in her, throbbing like a fresh wound, bleeding out of her now no matter how desperately she scrambles to staunch the flow, faster, slipping through her fingers until the air around her seems to crackle and hum with the force of it and there's no use for it, she can't stop it now, all she can do as it pours out of her is grab it and _wrench_ , and try to twist it into a shape that won't harm him.

_Let it be bubbles,_ she thinks desperately as her magic screams and whips through the air, bending the shape of the world around them. _Let it be blue hair. Let it be madness, only don't let it hurt anyone._

Her magic is a maelstrom around her and this man, this stupid, foolish man, only now frowns like he's gotten the first inkling that something might be amiss, like he's caught the first whiff of smoke on the air and can't see the fire raging around him. "What--" he starts to say, but it's too late, Quil's done all she can to shape the magic as it bursts out of her.

There's pressure so heavy it makes her ears ring and her chest ache, the weight of her magic crushing in against her. And then, when she doesn't think she can bear it a moment longer, it bursts out again with a deafening sound like thunder and a force strong enough to shake the trees around them and to fling the man away from her, to send him sprawling on his back in the grass a few strides away.

Quil drops to her knees, hands planted in the cool earth, gasping so hard it sounds like she's crying. The man pulls himself up to his feet and approaches her, cautious -- cautious _now_ , when it would have served him better before. It's a small mercy that he stops with a short distance still between them, and drops to a knee before her, and doesn't reach for her as he asks, "Are you all right?"

"I'm sorry," she manages between breaths. Tears drip down her cheeks and fall to the earth beneath her like raindrops, scorching hot. "I'm sorry. Did I hurt you? I'm sorry, I tried--"

"You didn't hurt me," he says, and she knows it's a lie, she _felt_ the force of that blast, she heard the impact when he fell. But if he's well enough to lie about it, then he's at least not likely to die from it. If she weren't already on her knees, she would sway from the relief of it. "Are you all right?"

She chokes on a bitter, awful laugh and shakes her head. How can she be? "You need to go."

His mouth tightens, frustration and stubbornness at once. "I have to get inside. If you're sure you're all right, I'll leave you, but I have to--"

"You can't," she says, firmer, stronger. Her breathing isn't even, but it's steadied enough that she pushes herself upright and wipes the dirt from her palms. Already she can hear the sounds of footsteps from inside the palace, voices raised in alarm. "They're coming for me. If they find you here, they'll kill you."

It still doesn't make him run. Stupid, _stupid_ man. Instead it makes him hesitate, makes him frown at her, his head tipped to the side like she's laid a puzzle out before him. Like he can't _hear_ that he doesn't have time to stand there and mull over how the pieces fit together. "You're not a servant," he says, and he sounds sure of it this time. "You're not a courtier. If you were a follower of the king, you'd be shouting for guards instead of telling me to run. Who _are_ you?"

She's so used to being recognized on sight, her skin and her eyes and her horns giving her away. She'd thought everyone in the palace and the city beyond knew her for the king's pet demon. It's almost refreshing not to be known. It would be, if she had the time for it. But he's still standing there staring at her, waiting on her response like he won't leave until he's seen the picture this puzzle will make, and so she says, shortly, "His prisoner," and moves towards the doorway beside them, glowing like a beacon with the light coming from inside, and looks through to see if the voices and footsteps within have reached them yet. The halls are still empty, but they have moments, if that, and then he'll be found as surely as she.

He still doesn't go. "Seath doesn't take prisoners," he says, and that's true enough. There are no dungeons in the palace, no stocks, no cells. Everyone knows if you're unlucky enough to displease the king, you'll pay for it with your life.

Then again, what need does a king like Seath have for dungeons? She's trapped as securely as anyone, and there are no bars in her prison, no cells. Only Seath and the certainty of what he'll do if she tries to leave.

"He does if he wants something from them," she tells the man, and her magic is settled enough that she dares to brace her hands on his shoulders and push him back, just one step. " _Go._ "

"Leave with me," he says, urgent, his face burning bright despite the shadows cloaking it. "I know how to get out of here without being seen. You could have doomed me, but you didn't. Let me free you, in return."

She smiles at him sadly and shakes her head. "I can't."

"It's easy. Just walk away from here."

"I can't," she says again. And now the light coming from the doorway is flickering as people move through it and the slap of dozens of boots on the stone floor is near, so near. They're in the hallway. They'll be in the courtyard in half a moment. "Go!"

And finally, finally, the man sinks back into the shadows, his mouth flat and unhappy about it but he goes, and Quil bends double, hands braced on her knees and hair a curtain across her face, breathing hard even now, and she waits for them to find her.

She scarcely manages three breaths before men burst through the doorway, shattering the stillness of the courtyard, and half a breath after that before there's a hand gripping her arm, jerking her upright. She doesn't fight, and the guardsman doesn't do anything but hold her fast. She's never given Seath's guards a reason to dislike her.

"Tell him we've found her. Tell him she's safe," the one who has her calls over his shoulder, and two others go back inside to relay the message.

_Safe_. The idea is laughable. She hasn't been safe since the moment that portal yawned open before her, glowing blue and crackling with energy, and she made the decision to step inside.

She knows when Seath has reached them because the guard's hand on her arm releases, and an instant later is replaced by another grip, harsher and far less kind.

"My dear," he says to her, and his voice drips with poison like honey from a comb. "You worried us terribly. Whatever were you doing out here?"

Dread sits too heavily in Quil's throat for her to speak. She swallows against it, futilely. She shakes her head, futilely.

"Thank you, gentlemen," Seath says over his shoulder to the guards who remain. "I am relieved beyond expressing that you found her safe, before any harm could befall her. I'll see she's delivered safely back to her quarters. You may return to your posts."

The guards all dip their heads in acknowledgment, one by one, and make their way back inside, leaving Quil alone with Seath in the dark of the courtyard. He looms over her, and the moment there's only the two of them his facade drops, and his mouth curls. " _What did you do?_ " he snarls, shaking her by his hold on her arm.

"I don't know," she gasps, pulling back against his grip despite herself. "I didn't-- I didn't mean to. It wasn't on purpose. I don't know how--"

"All this time. All this time I've fed and housed and clothed you, I've cared for you and ensured you wanted for nothing, and you've been _deceiving_ me." It isn't a question, so she doesn't answer. She couldn't, even if there was something to say to allay his fury. "There's only one thing I've ever asked of you, Quil, the only thing in exchange for all my generosity, and you've denied me all this while and pretended you don't have enough power inside you to shake the palace's foundations."

"I can't control it. It wasn't intentional. I don't know how I did it, it just happened."

"You will learn to control it. _Now_." His expression is as unyielding as the stone at her back. With sharp, commanding movements, he pulls open a pouch at his side, reaches a hand within and draws out the crystal that Quil knows too well. Tears burn in her eyes at the sight of it, frustration and despair rising up to choke her. She shakes her head still and tries to pull away, but Seath is immovable. His hand whips out, catches Quil's wrist and drags it toward him so he can press the crystal to her palm.

"You will earn your keep. Now. Tonight. Or you will see the end of my forbearance."

Quil's magic still swells at the touch of the crystal against her skin, yearning to fill it. But it's a tide she can hold back, now, and she pushes it down and away from that point of connection, where cool crystal rests on warm skin, and the crystal lies inert on her palm.

Seath's expression transforms with fury. He lets go of her wrist, grabs her by the back of her neck instead and shakes her, snarling, "Now, Quil, or I will show you what becomes of those who cross me."

There's movement behind him, a shape coming out of the shadows, half-obscured by Seath as he looms over Quil. But she recognizes the man's face, recognizes the determined set of it. She catches his gaze and holds it, shakes her head desperately, tries to tell him with a glance to _go_ , but he only keeps advancing, stalking towards them. His eyes are concerned as they hold hers, are enraged, and there's a bared blade in his hand as he moves towards them, as Seath's grip tightens on her until she cries out in pain and his voice snarls his demands into her face.

She doesn't know if he's coming to help her or because of his own agenda, whatever purpose it is that brought him here to sneak through the shadows at night. It doesn't matter. He's one man with a blade, and even with Seath alone here, his guardsmen gone so they won't witness him being harsh with Quil, Seath will destroy him the minute he reveals himself. And there's nothing Quil can do to save him from himself, nothing, nothing--

Not nothing. There's the crystal on her palm and her magic surging inside her. Quil tightens her fingers around the crystal and stops holding her magic back, stops fighting against it and instead _shoves_ it forward, pushes it into the crystal, pours it in and in and in until a spot in the very center of the gem starts to glow like one of the stars overhead.

She doesn't stop. She funnels her magic inside, packs it tight when it would overflow and search for someplace else to contain it, grabs every handful of it that she can and forces it through that connection until the crystal glows like a sun in her palm, blinding, filling the courtyard as though they stood in full daylight, and Quil is horribly aware of how thin the surface of the gem is as it strains to contain all the magic that she's poured into it. It's as delicate as one of the palace's fanciful sugar confections, as fragile as spun glass.

Quil meets the man's gaze over Seath's shoulder, holds it, says " _Run_." And then she lifts the crystal high overhead and dashes it to the hard-packed earth beneath them as Seath, realizing too late what she intends, roars with fury.

The sound of the crystal shattering is deafening, and the scream of the conflagration that follows is worse.

The light doesn't die when she shatters the gem, it grows, bursts like a nova through that quiet courtyard and Quil can see nothing but white, can hear nothing but the roar of flames in her ears, can feel nothing but the searing lick of it across her skin as the world turns to fire around her. She draws a breath to scream and the flames pour down her throat and fill her lungs and burn her up from the inside out, and when everything falls into blackness, it's nothing but a relief.

*

She hurts. Long before any other senses return to her, long before she's even aware enough to have the thought that she's alive, she hurts.

Still, it's an anchor, a tether. Something to grasp onto and use to drag herself out of the darkness and back into herself.

The pain's worse, when she does. She's aware of the texture of her clothing where it rests against her, and it feels as coarse as sand. She breathes and the fabric shifts against her skin and it pulls a strangled cry from her throat. She blinks her eyes open and even that hurts, and the light coming through her window is too bright. And there's a face over her, fuzzy and indistinct until she blinks a few times and it comes into focus.

It's not Seath, and she's pathetically grateful for small mercies. But it's a palace cleric she recognizes, a kind woman who smiles at Quil and pats her hand carefully and says, "Well, you're looking better than you were a few hours ago, that's for sure," and is sensible enough not to ask Quil how she feels, and Quil wonders for a moment if she died after all, and Seath went to the trouble and the expense of bringing her back.

"I'll give you some more healing in a few hours, once these magics have had a chance to settle in you, and my own stores have replenished a bit," the cleric says. "If you want to sleep some more in the meantime, though, I've a draught I can give you that will make sure you do."

Quil doesn't want to sink back into that darkness, but she doesn't want to hurt like this either. She shuts her eyes and makes a small sound, almost a whimper, and the cleric clucks her tongue sympathetically and lays a cool hand on her brow. "Here," she says, and the cool glass edge of a bottle touches her lip. "Drink this. You'll feel better when you wake, I'll make sure of it."

Quil drinks and slips back into that darkness where the pain, at least, recedes.

*

She wakes all at once, fuzzy-headed and disoriented, and blinks her eyes open only to wish she hadn't because now it _is_ Seath above her, staring down at her tight-lipped and imperious. "Sister," he says, his voice pitched to carry farther than would be necessary if he were speaking to her, and Quil blinks the grit from her eyes and sees the cleric now, hovering behind Seath and looking distressed. "What will it take to get her on her feet again?"

The cleric chews on her lip a moment, glancing briefly at Quil before back to Seath. "She needs to rest, your Majesty. Magic can accomplish a great deal, but her body still needs--"

"How long?"

Another apologetic glance at Quil. "A few more rounds of healing magics, at least, before I'll clear her to get out of bed and walk a little. More than that before she's strong enough to venture beyond the bounds of her chamber."

The corners of Seath's mouth tighten. "You have until morning," he says, "to see she's fit for travel."

The cleric gapes at him, and Quil does too. "Where--" Quil manages, her voice harsh as a rasp through her throat.

Seath cuts the question off with a sweep of his hand. "Do as your healer bids you," he says to Quil, and it might sound like concern if Quil weren't looking at his face, and the way his eyes were as cold as ice, as hard as granite. "The rest will wait until morning." And with that, he turns and sweeps out of Quil's chamber, leaving only the cleric behind with her, her expression gone tight and grave.

She pulls Quil's chair over to the side of her bed, settles herself on its edge and reaches to carefully take Quil's hand into her own.

"Don't," Quil says, another croak. "Don't tax yourself on his account. Or on mine."

The cleric smiles at her a little, but there's too much sadness in it to be reassuring. "I must," she says softly, and Quil thinks of the leverage that Seath has over her, the way he's kept her in line all this time that she's been his ward, and knows it's foolish to assume that she might be the only one. Even for those without the sort of ties that can be easily leveraged, he's king, after all. All he'd need to do is suggest that refusal might cost one their life. It wouldn't be a stretch to believe, not with Seath. Not for anyone who knew him.

"Relax now," the cleric murmurs, a soothing rhythm to her voice, and Quil feels the warmth of the other woman's magic flowing into her. "You'll feel better when I'm done."

Quil doesn't protest further. If there's someone whose life the cleric cares about more than her own, then who is Quil to tell her to do otherwise? There's little point in it, not when Seath knows what Quil can do now, not when she defied him so blatantly. She doesn't know why he cares so much about keeping her alive when she made it clear she'd rather send herself up in flames than do what he wishes of her, but it can't be for anything good.

He was standing right before her when she set her magic free and the world went up in flames, and he didn't even look singed. She doesn't know what that means. Maybe only that he's king, with the power and resources to command a whole army of clerics to heal him until there's no sign he was ever hurt in the first place, should he wish to. It would explain why there's only the one left to care for Quil, taxing herself more than she ought to to meet Seath's demands.

The absence of pain where once it held her in its grip feels like euphoria, a rush and release that buoys her up. "Thank you," she says to the cleric as exhaustion bears her back under, and, "I'm sorry," and then she sleeps again.

*

When she wakes again, she still hurts, but it's like a pond compared to an ocean, easy to set from her mind. She pushes herself upright, sitting with the blankets puddled around her waist, and her arms tremble, weaker than they should be, than they used to be. But still, it's more than she could have ever hoped to manage the last time she was awake.

The sun outside slants through her chamber window at a shallow angle, the weak, pale light of early morning. The cleric who tended to her is in the chair at her bedside, asleep there, looking hollow-eyed and drawn from her exertions. What was the point of Seath demanding this of her, when surely he's just going to kill Quil now for refusing him?

She swings her legs over the bed's edge and eases herself up onto her hooves. It still hurts to move, but she does so slowly and carefully, shuffling across the chamber to her wardrobe, finding a dress inside and struggling into it, fighting to keep quiet so she doesn't disturb the cleric and wake her from the sleep she so clearly needs.

She's just cinching a belt around her middle when there's a quiet knock at the door that makes her jump, makes her breath stop in her throat for a moment only to resume, fast and shallow.

Seath has never bothered to knock before, only invited himself in as though it were his right. Perhaps he's only playing at the courtesy because the cleric is present, or someone else is outside with him to see. She wipes the sweat from her palms on her skirt and then moves to the door. There's little else to be done; it's the only one her chamber has, and she's in no shape to go out the window.

She pulls the door open, braced for Seath's anger and his sickly-sweet pretenses. Instead there's a half-orc standing in the hallway outside her chamber -- not a guard, when she's wearing leathers instead of plate or mail, but not a courtier either, and Quil can't place her. She looks at her curiously, uncertainly, then ventures, "Can I help you?"

"I am sent to ready you for travel, my lady," the woman says with a shallow bow. "Is there much you need to prepare?"

Quil can do little more than stare at her, her heart in her throat. Seath had said travel, and she had assumed-- Well. She casts that off with a shake of her head. "I have little enough to pack, if you don't mind waiting. Please, come in." She steps back, out of the doorway, and swings the door open to allow the woman through. "Where are we traveling to?" She tries to make her voice light as she asks it, like the answer doesn't mean anything at all, when the truth is it means everything.

The woman doesn't answer straightaway, and when Quil turns back to look at her, wondering why, she's giving Quil a long, searching look, for reasons Quil can't fathom. She doesn't say anything though, just watches her from beneath a slight frown, so Quil turns away again and starts pulling dresses from her wardrobe. If the woman has something on her mind, she'll either say it or she won't, and Quil knows better than to try to drag words out of someone who's reluctant to speak.

"His Majesty didn't say," she says at last, when the pause has been long enough that Quil had given up on being answered at all. "Only that we're to take provisions enough for a journey of at least several days. I was under the impression that you could say where we were heading, since he wouldn't."

Quil lets out a breath of humorless laughter and shakes her head. "It's as much a mystery to me as to you. Well, I suppose we shall be informed eventually. Unless his Majesty expects us to ride around the city in circles until he deigns to tell us otherwise."

It's dangerously close to a criticism, here inside the palace walls where no one with any sense would even dare to breathe a whisper of it against the king. But why should Quil care? He knows she's been defying him now, all this time. What is a mildly critical comment, in the face of that?

Still, Phi gives her another searching look before she says, "I'm sure you're right," and then, "Do you need any assistance with your packing?"

Quil shakes her head and takes a few more dresses from the wardrobe. "You're not a maid. I can do it for myself. Unless I'm delaying us too long...?"

The woman shakes her head, a hint of a smile pulling at her mouth. "I don't mind waiting."

"Then I won't be but a moment more." It's the work of half a minute to fold her dresses up and fit them in a riding pack, and little longer to snatch up a brush, gloves, a shawl to wrap her shoulders in. She has little in the way of personal possessions beyond the necessities, and she only hesitates when her gaze falls on the desk, and it's tidy stack of paper there, with pen and pot of ink beside it like they're just waiting for her to pick them up again.

She only hesitates an instant before she shakes her head, casting off the thought. She hasn't finished a letter yet, and she wouldn't send it even if she did. What's the point in taking it, when it will only add unnecessary weight to her pack?

She turns her back on it deliberately, leaves it behind, and hefts her pack over her shoulder before she approaches the woman, who's waiting just within the doorway and not looking terribly impatient. "I'm ready," Quil tells her, and then falters. "Forgive me. I've lived here long enough, I ought to know everyone who walks these halls, but I don't know your name."

That faint smile returns, a glimmer of amusement brightening up her otherwise-stoic expression. "I don't spend much time in the halls, I confess. You'd have little cause to know me." She dips her head, acknowledgment and respect both written into the gesture. "Phillippa. But call me Phi, please."

"Phi, then." Quil dips a curtsy in return, and doesn't miss the way it makes Phi blink at her, startled. "I'm Quil."

Phi's smile stretches just a little wider than her others have. "I've heard of you. But it's good to meet you properly, all the same." She steps back, leaving room for Quil, and gestures towards the door. "Let's go see if our horses are ready, then. Do you need help with your pack?"

Quil shakes her head. "Thank you, but it's not heavy. I can manage."

And Phi, instead of protesting, instead of insisting that a woman in a fine gown, a lady of the court under the king's protection, shouldn't be expected to carry even that much of a weight on her own, Phi simply nods acknowledgment and leads Quil through the palace and out to the stables.

Their horses are, it turns out, ready for them, two of them saddled and waiting as Quil and Phi approach, a young stablehand standing at their heads and holding their reins gathered in one hand, feeding them crabapples from his pockets with the other. He jumps a little when he sees the two of them nearing, stands at attention with his gaze riveted on Phi. "Mistress," he says with a bow once they're closer enough for him to offer the reins to her.

"Phi will do," she tells him, smiling and warm, warmer than she was in any of her interactions with Quil, which makes Quil consider her sidelong. "Thank you, Stefan. Are there enough oats in the saddlebags?"

He bobs his head eagerly. "Yes, Mistress Phi, I put them in there myself, I made sure of it."

Phi laughs quietly and reaches a hand into her purse. She draws out a coin and tosses it to the boy, who snatches it out of the air and stares at her, wide-eyed. "Help Lady Quil get her bags settled," she tells him, "and then go run off and see if they need anything else of you in the stables."

"Yes, Mistress Phi." Stefan dips into another eager bow before he turns to Quil and reaches for her pack. "Beg your pardon, my lady."

Quil doesn't fight to keep possession of her bag, but she does protest, "That isn't necessary, I can see to it myself." Stefan pays her little mind, though, and has her pack up and settled on the horse's back before she's even finished speaking.

Phi checks on her own pack while Stefan sees to Quil's, and in moments they're ready, Stefan bobbing a bow at both of them before running off into the stables as directed, and Phi mounts her horse easily, so there's little for Quil to do but to drag herself up into her own saddle, somewhat less gracefully, and ride behind Phi as she leads them to the palace gates.

There's a small crowd gathered there, and Seath stands at the head of them all. The sight of him makes her stomach clench, makes her magic batter furiously against her skin. But whatever Seath intends with her, it won't be helped by letting her feelings show here, so she keeps her expression neutral and doesn't allow herself to shy away when he steps forward at their approach and lays a hand on her mare's bridle.

To the rest of the crowd, it must look like an affectionate gesture, like he's stroking the horse's neck. But from Quil's vantage, so terribly close to him, she can see the way he curls his fingers through the straps of the bridle, holding the horse in place so she can't toss her head or buck, and so Quil can't press a heel to her side and direct her away from him. It's all a show. That's all anything ever is with Seath -- a pretty illusion, to mask the ugliness underneath.

Quil sits perfectly straight in her saddle and doesn't react to him, one way or another. Beside her and a little ahead, she can see Phi twist in her own saddle to look back at them, sees her gaze drop to Seath's hand on the mare's neck and then she abruptly snaps her gaze forward again, away from them both.

The crowd before them is made of courtiers. No one particularly important -- as an orphaned ward, Quil doesn't warrant that -- but a few passingly-familiar faces, and enough of them to spread the story of what they've seen here to every corner of the palace before nightfall. "My friends," Seath says, lifting his voice to address them all, and it's all Quil can do not to roll her eyes while everyone's attention is fixed upon her. "It is with a heavy heart that I admit that our palace clerics, skilled though they are, are not up to the task of healing the terrible injuries that our dear Tranquility suffered in that cowardly attack two days past."

There's a shifting and a murmur through the crowd, and Quil glances down at Seath, wondering what game he's playing at, when he practically killed that cleric with his demands to ensure that Quil _was_ recovered.

"Our sages and diviners have learned of a miraculous herb that has been discovered growing wild in our eastern forest, full of such natural magic that a single leaf is said to be enough to brew a potion strong enough to cure even the gravest of wounds. This, of course, makes it a very valuable plant, and very highly-desired, and so there is no time to spare in sending a party out to search for it and bring some home, and see that our dear Tranquility may benefit from it."

It takes everything in Quil, all the strength of will she has mastered bringing it to bear against her own magic, not to react or show her disbelief. She sits perfectly still, her fingers wrapped around the horse's reins so tight that her knuckles have gone pale, and doesn't look at Seath and doesn't move at all except to blink as she keeps her gaze fixed off into the distance, so her expression won't betray her.

"Of course," Seath continues, his voice dropping and turning sad, turning concerned, as he takes his hand from the mare's bridle and pats Quil's leg with it instead. She nearly jumps at his touch, but controls the reaction at the last moment. "Of course, I couldn't bear the thought of poor Tranquility suffering even a day longer than she must. And so it is with a heart weighed by concern and grief at the harm that has been caused to my own ward, within my own palace walls, that I announce the expedition that will be leaving this very morning, to find this wondrous herb and see that she benefits from it, as expeditiously as possible.

"We are, of course, saddened to be losing Tranquility's gracious presence within our halls. But we send her off with our own huntswoman, to see her there safely, and we content ourselves in knowing that she will return to us whole and hale once more, and no longer suffering. Please, I ask you to join me in seeing them off, and wishing them well."

There is the patter of polite applause from the courtiers, though most of the interest Quil sees on the faces around her seems more to do with this miracle herb Seath has promised them than anything to do with Quil. She has been an unobjectionable presence at the court since Seath took her in as his ward, but she is not dear to any of them. Most have kept their distance from her, made nervous by the horns and the eyes and the tail that she can do little to conceal. No one cares particularly about her health or her suffering.

Seath, to be sure, does not.

They are there to see them off, though, and so there is little Quil can do but to let them, to tap her heels against her mare's sides and ride behind Phi as she leads them through the gates and onto the broad, paved King's Road beyond, that will take them straight to the city walls and then the country beyond. 

Quil is not a fool. Nothing good will come of this, she knows. Seath's concern was all a show, has always been so, and whatever his reasons for sending her from the palace, they're born of anger and betrayal, not consideration. Even so, as they ride away from the palace and the city swallows it up behind them, she feels like she can breathe in a way she hasn't been able to since he first took her in. Even her magic settles, a steady hum like an active, healthy hive, instead of the screaming rage of a disturbed nest. 

She tips her face up to the sky, blue as Seath's ruined crystal above her, and lets herself enjoy at least this moment for what it is. She is riding away from Seath, and his palace, and his games. She is leaving them all behind her.

It's enough, for now. It's more than she ever thought she'd have.

*

They make good time, and stop a few hours outside of the city to rest their horses and let them drink at the side of a stream, and to dig food out of Phi's packs and eat a late luncheon of fruit and cheese and good, hearty bread from the palace kitchens.

Quil sits on a fallen log that's only a little rotted, still sturdy enough to support her weight, and tears pieces off of the half of the loaf that Phi had handed to her. She eats them thoughtfully, trying not to be too obvious about watching Phi as she does so. "The fire," she says at length, and Phi startles and glances up at her from the berries she's picking seeds out of. "How-- How bad was it?"

"Half the trees in the courtyard were scorched. I suppose time will tell whether they survive the damage or not, though it seems unlikely. There are druids who could help, perhaps, but--" She hesitates, and turns her head a little to frown into the distance. "I haven't heard that his Majesty sent for them. He hardly keeps me apprised of his every missive, though. Perhaps he has, or will."

Quil swallows down a mouthful of bread that all of the sudden tastes like ash. She shuts her eyes briefly, her heart hurting for that little copse of trees that had offered her shelter so many times, that might die now because of her. "Perhaps he will," she agrees softly, though she can't quite make herself believe it.

When she opens her eyes a moment later, Phi is watching her again, that same puzzled, puzzling look. She still doesn't say anything though, and a moment later continues, "The wall, of course, is blackened, but it'll take more than a bit of fire to compromise the strength of those stones."

Quil reaches across the space between them and takes a handful of the berries for herself, so she can help at picking the seeds from them, and give her hands something to do other than tremble. "But-- Was no one else harmed?"

Phi's features soften at that. "No one but you, so far as I've heard. Whoever did this--" The corners of her mouth tighten briefly. "They don't seem to have accomplished what they meant to. I can't imagine they came for you. You don't seem the sort to make enemies."

It startles a burst of laughter from Quil, too quick for her to contain it. Her hands fly up to press against her mouth, too late. The sound's already been let loose, wild and ragged. "Don't I?" she wonders, and her tail lashes despite herself.

The movement attracts Phi's attention. She glances down and one brow lifts, and then lifts higher when Quil instinctively draws her tail back, letting it hang down behind the log she's on, out of sight. Phi lifts her gaze back to meet Quil's and smiles, smiles in a way that Quil is abruptly sure is meant to display her tusks. "Not to me," she says quietly, and Quil wants to laugh again, or cry, or bury her face in her hands.

"I should have ventured out of the palace halls more," she says instead, breathed softly down at her hands as she picks the berries' flesh free from its seeds. The juice stains her fingers, turns her red skin purple as though she's dipped them in a pot of ink, and a pile of seeds gathers at her hooves. "Perhaps we'd have met under different circumstances, if I'd wandered a bit farther. I wish we had."

She can feel the weight of Phi's regard on her, but she doesn't look up. She can't bring herself to. "Why wish it?" Phi asks after a moment. "We've met now, haven't we?"

"Yes," Quil agrees, and her voice is softer still. "But you do mean to kill me, after all."

Phi says nothing, doesn't make a sound, doesn't move. Quil risks a glance up at her, wonders if she'll find her with a blade in her hand now that Quil's stated it plain, but Phi is just sitting there with berries forgotten in her hands, staining her skin a different shade of purple than Quil's. She's staring at Quil, entirely expressionless.

"I think we might have got on well," Quil continues, gently, "if we'd met without that between us."

"How--" Phi's voice is strangled, though her face still reveals nothing. " _Why--_ "

Quil sets her berries back onto the sheet of oilcloth that they'd been packed in for travel, next to the pile that Phi's picked clean herself. "I'm not a fool," she says, but there's no censure in it. "If there were truly a miraculous healing herb growing in the eastern forest, it would have been found before now. Herbalists would have flocked to it. Druids would have cultivated it and spread it across the land. Clerics would carry it in their kits. It's very convenient timing that it's been found now, just when Seath needs an excuse to send me from the palace." Phi's expression flickers and Quil realizes, too late, that she called him by name rather than title, here sitting before Seath's own huntswoman. Well, it's not as though Phi doesn't already mean to kill her, is it? "Besides, why send a _hunter_ to go pick an herb?"

"The woods are perilous," Phi says, and her voice is still choked, just a little.

"They are," Quil agrees quietly. "I imagine it will make a terribly convenient excuse, when you return without me."

"Why would you leave with me," Phi asks after a long, long moment of silence between them, "knowing what you do? If you believe that, then why would you have come?"

_What choice did I have?_ Quil wonders, shaking her head. _What was left for me in the palace but Seath's wrath?_

Phi must take the gesture for refusal, because her brows furrow into another frown, deeper than the others she's directed at Quil. After a moment, she wraps the berries back up in the oilcloth and then gets to her feet and holds the packet out to Quil. "Carry it in your pack," she says. "You didn't eat enough to feed a mouse, hardly. You'll be hungry again before we stop to make camp. Keep it, so you can eat while we ride."

Quil accepts the little bundle of berries wordlessly, and when  Phi turns away to go see to the horses Quil finds that now she's the one frowning, trying to puzzle her out. She had half expected, with the truth now aired between them, that Phi would pull her knife and end the charade. What point is there in continuing their ride, in playacting at a search for something they both know doesn't exist?

Still, she has no wish to die. If Phi means to let her live longer before she drives her blade home, if it soothes her conscience to press food into her hands and bid her to eat as though her hunger matters at all, well. Quil's not particularly inclined to press the issue.

"Let's ride," Phi says, already mounted up while Quil is still working at fitting the berries into her pack in a way that won't crush them during their journey. "We've a few hours of light left. If we follow the stream and don't dawdle, we can make it to a clearing by the river that I know of. It'll be a good place to make camp for the night, and we can catch fish for our supper."

It all seems absurd, voicing concerns about making good time, going to the effort of fishing for supper, when there's no real destination awaiting them and the journey is going to end with a knife in Quil's back, or across her throat. Why worry about her getting hungry on the trail? Why bother to ensure she has a supper of fresh fish, when trail rations would do just as well?

She can't imagine any of this is at Seath's command. If he could have managed it without losing the sympathy of his people, he'd have killed her there in her bedchamber. He wouldn't bother telling Phi to be courteous to her, except perhaps to try to allay her suspicions, which have already been voiced and confirmed, or near enough. Why would Phi trouble herself with courtesy towards the woman she's been commanded to kill?

*

They ride in silence for the next few hours. Eventually, Quil twists in her saddle to root through her pack behind her and pull out the parcel of berries, and when she straightens with it in her hand, she catches Phi watching her sidelong. There's no smugness in her expression, no what-did-I-tell-you smirk, only a quiet satisfaction, like she's glad. Like she honestly cares whether Quil's stomach grumbles or not.

Quil can't make sense of her, and so she puzzles over that as they ride, trying to reconcile the king's huntswoman, someone who would accept an order to kill someone who's done her no harm, with the woman who rides at her side and bids her carry fruit in her pack and promises her fresh fish for supper.

The sun's just beginning to graze the tops of the trees when the stream takes a sharp turn and they have to cross it in order to continue east. "Carefully here," Phi calls back over her shoulder as she nudges her horse across first. "The footing can be tricky. But she's as dependable as you could ask for. Give her her head and let her go at her pace and she'll do right by you."

Quil loosens her grip on the reins and does as Phi says, allowing the mare to step forward and sniff at the water's edge, where it laps at the shore, before taking her first cautious step into it.

Neither of their horses cross quickly, but Quil would rather caution over speed any day. She keeps the reins loose and tries not to tense up on the horse's back, and in a few minutes they've all four made it safely to the other side unscathed.

They ride on and, as though Phi's words are like Quil's magic, impossible to contain once they've been given a taste of freedom, now she fills the silence between them with little comments and observations — about how the leaves were turning the last time she rode through here, about a stone they ride past that's yards from the water's edge but that Phi said could barely be seen once a few years past, when the river flooded and even the stream ran like a torrent.

It's not the sort of ceaseless chatter that Quil's used to from the court, breezy conversation meant for its own sake, and it doesn't grate on Quil the way she might have expected. It's easy to ride at Phi's side and listen to her speak and never feel as though she's obligated to respond or to make conversation.

Phi doesn't fall truly quiet until they reach a clearing on the bank of the river and they stop to make camp. Quil takes her saddle and packs off of her mare and sets her loose to graze on the abundant grass, then watches curiously as Phi takes a bundle of line from her pack with a barbed hook at the end, and toes off her boots and her stockings before digging something out of her pack to bait the hook with, and then wades into the shallows of the river with it and casts the line out towards a still part of the river, where the water ripples but doesn't churn.

Quil moves around the edges of the clearing, gathering firewood, then comes back with her arms full of it and drops it at the edge of the shore and crouches there to work at building a fire. It's a good place for it, with earth and rock to build it on instead of flammable grass, and it lets Quil watch surreptitiously as she strikes a flint and fights to get her kindling to catch, and as Phi stands calf-deep in the river with the water eddying about her legs, holding the line and patiently waiting for a fish to bite. 

Quil sits back on her heels, the task of lighting the fire forgotten for a moment, and watches her openly, watches her stand and wait and wait, long past when Quil would have given up and retreated to shore, to change into dry clothes and find something else to fill her belly with for supper.

Phi stands in the river like she has nothing pressing to do, like she's not hungry, like she'd be just delighted to stand there all through evening and into the dawn. Quil doesn't know why she'd be surprised to learn Phi has the patience of a hunter, but it's one thing to suppose a thing is true and another entirely to witness it.

And then the line shifts, the angle of it changing just slightly where it enters the water, and all at once Phi is in motion, pulling in the line and sending the fish that she's caught thrashing about on the river's surface, throwing up great, violent plumes of water.

Quil scrambles down from her makeshift campfire and is there ready, reaching, when Phi hauls the fish in to the bank. Quil drags it up onto the rocks and finds a clean stone to kill it with, and then stands there breathing hard from even that brief moment of trying to overpower the fish, while Phi stands two strides away, looking wet but satisfied and not at all winded. 

"If you get that fire going, and get the fish cleaned and on it," Phi says, waiting patiently while Quil works the hook free of the fish's mouth, "I'll let you have the first one for your own."

Quil does, not because she cares particularly about getting to eat first but because it needs doing. She keeps her attention focused on the fire this time, on the sparks that fly off of the flint and smolder in the kindling, instead of on Phi and her fishing. But she can still hear the quiet burble of the water as it flows around Phi's legs, broken with quick, efficient movements when she's got a fish on her line, and the sudden, violent eruption of water like a roar as the fish surfaces and struggles. And soon Quil has a second fishing lying beside her first and a small flame burning in her kindling that she's carefully feeding larger and larger sticks to, building it up until it's strong enough to stack logs on and cook their supper over. And Phi joins her at the fireside, dragging over a stone flat enough to make a good seat and sits there, legs stretched towards the fire so its warmth can dry out the sodden cuffs of her trousers. 

Quil wouldn't grudge her if she stayed right there, not after she put in the work of catching their dinner in the first place. But once the fire is burning bright enough and hot enough to not need constant tending, Phi pushes herself up to her feet with a groan and helps Quil hunt through the trees around their clearing until they come up with two forked branches and a third, long and straight and green enough not to burn, that they can use to get their fish cooking over the flames. She joins Quil in a matter-of-fact way, not asking or offering assistance, which Quil could decline, just stepping in and working at her side. And, true to her word, once the first fish is cooked and the second on the spit, Phi offers it over to Quil, and then stretches her legs out towards the fire again to finish drying.

The fish is flaky and sweet, and while the cooks in Seath's kitchens would have wept over the simplicity of the meal, it's the finest Quil's tasted in longer than she can remember. She's hungry enough from their ride and the work of getting their meal ready that anything would be satisfying, but it's also the first time in too long that she's eaten without the shadow of Seath's attention hanging over her, without dread curdling in her stomach at the certainty that he'll come to her with his demands once the meal is over. There's Phi, who's going to kill her, but even that is better than night after night of Seath's demands, of struggling to hold her magic in check and knowing the consequences if she fails. Phi's a hunter, and at least Quil can be reasonably certain that however she does it, she'll be quick about it, and merciful. She dreads what's coming less than she did the lingering torment of Seath's nightly demands.

Night comes quickly, when it comes, and soon enough the clearing has gone dark around them, only the brilliant stars overhead and the dancing light of their fire to see by. Phi's cuffs have long since dried out, but she stays leaning back, elbows braced behind her and feet towards the fire, occasionally tossing one of the bones they'd picked out of the fish into it, to snap and crackle in the flames. Quil watches her sidelong and wonders what it is she's thinking about, whether she's trying to work up her nerve to do what Seath has demanded of her.

It's quiet and peaceful. The stars overhead are lovely, and the murmur of the river and the whisper of the breeze through the grasses make a soothing music. Quil's belly is full and even her magic is settled, as much as it ever is, and she tips her head back and picks out constellations overhead, and thinks that she could do far worse, if she were choosing moments to be her last.

But still, the fire burns down and when Phi moves from it, it's only to cross over to her packs and lay out her bedroll, and then Quil's. Quil watches her at it from beside the fire, and finally can't hold back any longer. "What are you doing?" she asks her, called softly across the clearing.

Phi straightens up from where she's tugging at the corner of her bedroll, making sure it's laid out flat, and looks to her. "Sleeping, eventually," she says, the warmth of humor in her voice. "Do you not intend to as well? You'll regret it come the morning, I suspect."

Quil shakes her head slowly and twists her fingers together on her lap. "What are you _waiting_ for?"

Phi straightens all the way at that, and turns to face her squarely. She's far enough away from the fire that her face is only a little lit by it, and what Quil can see of it is perfectly unreadable. "I have a job to do," she says, flat and unyielding.

"So _do it._ "

Phi breathes sharp, just once. "I am," she says, and lays down in her bedroll, and says nothing else.

Quil stares at the shadowed shape of her for a few moments before she rises and moves to her own bedroll. She sits to unbutton her dress, to strip down to her shift to sleep in, and then sits there with her hands stilled on the buttons, her chest too tight and her heart pounding too fast.

"I could run," she says softly, looking down at the button between her fingers. "While you slept, I could run. Why would you give me the opportunity?"

Phi's blankets rustle. Quil looks up just enough to see her rolled onto her side. Her face is in shadow, but Quil's certain she's watching her. She can feel the weight of her gaze. "Yes," Phi says, and there's something strange about the way she says it, an unexpected weight to the words. "You could."

Quil finishes wrestling out of her dress and slides beneath her own blanket, because she can't think of what else she might say to that, or why Phi would say it in the way that she did, like there was something important about it.

After a long moment, Phi gives a sharp sigh and her blanket rustles again, and Quil risks a glance and sees she's rolled over onto her back, a faint glimmer of light showing that her eyes are open and fixed on the sky overhead. "What do you suppose would happen, if you did run?"

Quil makes a face into the darkened night. "You're the king's huntswoman. You'd track me and catch me, and do what he bid you all the same." Her voice hitches, just a little. "Maybe you'd be less merciful about it, since I'd made you go to the trouble of finding me."

Phi says nothing, neither confirming nor refuting Quil's predictions. Quil frowns down at her hands, where her fingers are twisted together, and when the moment stretches and Phi still doesn't break the silence, she blows out a sharp breath. "Besides, Seath has diviners. It's not as though I could hide, even if I did manage to lose you."

"Yes," Phi says all at once, rolling onto her side to face Quil. "He does have diviners." And there's something strange about how she says this, too. The emphasis is all wrong, too heavy in places that make no sense.

Quil must take too long considering this, because after a moment Phi sighs again and rolls onto her back once more. She spends a moment shoving at the blanket she's folded up beneath her head, then settles. "Sleep, Quil. If you're going to."

Quil pulls her own blankets over herself and lays down, head pillowed on her arm, lying on her side and frowning at the unmoving shape of Phi a short distance away, close enough that if Quil rolled over onto her stomach and stretched out her arm, she could almost touch her. She doesn't make any sense at all, and Quil considers her as crickets chirp in the clearing around them and the stars make their slow progress overhead, trying to figure it out. But sleep comes long before any clarity does.

*

Quil wakes, only a little surprised to do so. If Phi were struggling to find the nerve to kill her as Seath commanded her to, she might have found it easier to strike the blow in the dark, while Quil slept, when she couldn't struggle and Phi didn't have to look at her as she did so. But Phi doesn't seem cowardly to her, doesn't seem the sort to waver on a path that she has set herself. She thinks, if Phi were truly reluctant to kill her, she'd have settled that at least in her own mind before she'd come to rouse Quil from her bed and escort her from the palace.

And so, there must be a purpose to it, to keeping Quil alive instead of killing her the moment they were far enough away from the palace that Seath could plausibly deny any involvement. Perhaps the journey isn't a lie, only the object that they seek. Perhaps she was foolish not to have already considered that, while Seath might decide to have her killed in a fit of pique, he'd be far less likely to willingly give up the magic that bubbles and roils inside of her, that he's been trying all this time to encourage her to give him. It's the whole reason he took her in and named her his ward, after all. If Phi killed her outright, he'd be no better off than if she lived but continued to refuse him. He has a temper, to be sure, but even so he's too smart for that.

So there's a purpose to the journey, beyond just getting Quil outside of the palace walls so that she can die without Seath being blamed for it. A ritual, perhaps, or some magic spell or item that will drink up her magic and bottle it for Seath's use. Perhaps something a little more reliable than his blue crystals, since even he must have realized how insufficient they are at containing her magic, after she demonstrated it so dramatically.

_Well,_ she thinks, and pushes herself upright from her bedroll. _If he means to steal my magic, I wish him luck with it._

If there's any justice in the world at all, it will explode around him the first time he tries to use it, and this time it'll kill him. Quil thinks she might almost be okay with dying, with having her magic stolen for someone like him to use, if that's what comes of it.

Almost.

Phi stirs and stretches as Quil rises and shakes the wrinkles out of her dress, as best as she can. When Quil turns to wish her a good morning, Phi is sitting up on her bedroll and frowning at Quil as though she's mystified by her, and not entirely happy about it.

"We've lost some of the morning, it looks like," Quil says briskly, and starts packing up her bedroll and what few of her things she'd removed from her packs the night before. "But I daresay we both needed it. We should head out before we've lost any more of the day, though, don't you think?"

It takes a long moment before Phi answers her. She just sits there frowning at her, and Quil decides that until she decides to share whatever it is that's perturbed her, Quil isn't going concern herself with it, so she turns her back on Phi and busies herself with finishing her packing and fixing her packs and her saddle back onto the mare, who stands patiently waiting, nibbling at some more grass, while Quil fumbles with it.

"There's time enough for a wash in the river, and to change into fresh clothes for the day's ride," Phi says at length, "if you'd like to."

Quil cinches the saddle's girth around the mare's middle, then checks to ensure that it's not too tight on her. "Will we continue following the river? If there'll be be opportunity for it tonight, I'll do it then. I don't relish the idea of trying to ride while I'm damp, and I can wash my clothes at the same time, and leave them up to dry overnight." She twists, giving Phi a look over her shoulder. "Unless you wish to now?"

Phi shakes her head after a moment. "Tonight will suit me well enough, if you're sure." And she rises and begins to pack her things up as well, and it's but the work of a few moments before the horses are saddled and they're ready to resume their journey.

Quil's quiet as they ride, but Phi seems unperturbed by it, and they ride in stretches of silence that are occasionally broken by her comments or observations, or stories. It's comforting, or would be, if Quil weren't preoccupied with wondering what exactly Seath intends with her and her magic.

The restlessness that had been stirring within her hasn't returned, not like she'd expected. She can feel the thrum of her magic inside her, can feel it shift and stir, but it isn't pressing against her skin, fighting for freedom. Not yet. Before, every time her magic burst from her, it gained her perhaps a day of not having to constantly fight it before it startled building up again.

Now it's been days, and it's not _quiet_ , but it's not fighting her as much as she's used to. Maybe traveling has settled that restless urge, she thinks, or maybe it's due to not living under the constant dread of anticipating Seath and his demands. Maybe it's not having that crystal placed into her hands every night, trying to drink her magic up even as she fights with tooth and nail to hold it back. 

Maybe it's simply that Phi is easy to be around, even if she does mean to kill her. After so long in Seath's court, spending every moment trying not to bend beneath the weight of politics and rules and whispered words that carry double meanings, Phi's easy silence and conversation that demands little of Quil is refreshing. Even knowing she's riding towards her death, she likes it better than living in the palace, knowing that it might wait for her around every corner, and that every smile might hide a dagger.

Phi stops them for the evening earlier than they had the day before, with the sun still hovering far enough above the treetops that they can bathe before dark comes and the temperatures drop, and still have time to cook and eat besides. While Quil dismounts and frees her mare from the weight of her saddle and bags, Phi digs through her own pack, and then catches Quil's eye across their mounts' withers. "You built the fire last night. I'll do it tonight, while you bathe, if you like."

Quil inclines her head in acknowledgment. "Thank you. That's kind." 

Phi's expression twists like she wants to say something about that, but she just shakes her head and tosses Quil something from her pack. Quil catches it by reflex, and then looks at it. It's a square of creamy pale soap that smells a little of herbs and all at once reminds her of her mother's shop so keenly that she can scarcely breathe, and her magic surges up against her skin like a tide. "Just leave it down there for me," Phi says, "and I'll make use of it when you're done."

Quil nods, wordless, and Phi turns to make her way towards a nearby bit of brush to gather sticks and twigs to build their fire with. Quil watches her back for a moment, her hand clenched tight around the soap, and hopes Phi doesn't turn and see her still standing there and ask her what's wrong, because Quil thinks if she does that either magic or words will come pouring out of her without cease, and she's not sure which would be worse.

But Phi works steadily and doesn't turn back, doesn't seem to notice that Quil hasn't left yet, and eventually Quil is able to draw a sharp breath into her aching lungs, and turn, and begin to pick her way down to the river's bank.

The river's broader here than it had been where they'd made camp the night before, but rushing just as fast. It would be treacherous to try to bathe in but for a cluster of boulders downstream that Quil picks her way towards, and finds when she reaches them that they've made a still pool on their leeward side, broad enough to fit her in, to fit even Phi's larger frame, and deep enough to submerge completely.

The water is bracing when she wades in, holding her skirts up enough that they won't get sodden and tangle around her legs. She gasps and mutters oaths beneath her breath that would've made anyone at court gasp, if anyone at court understood Infernal. But when she's waded up to her knees and adjusted to the cold enough to overcome the urge to bolt back to the bank and up onto dry land, she strips her dress and underclothes off and dunks them in the water, scrubs them each in turn with Phi's soap and does what she can to work the dirt of the road out of them, before she dunks them again to rinse the soap out and then wades back to shore to hang the garments from the branch of a nearby tree, so they can start to drip dry while she bathes.

It's easier to get back in the water the second time, with her skin still chilled enough to be at least a little numb. Still, she stands with the water up to her calves and eyes the calm, shadowed pool just before her, and knows the only way to do it is all at once, or she'll be forever trying to ease her way in one creeping step at a time, and the chill will get to her long before she's ever had a chance to get clean. 

She fills her lungs, shuts her eyes and pinches her nose shut with her fingers, and jumps forward into the deepest part of the pool, and plunges straight under.

The water closes over her head and it's so much more than _bracing_ now, now that it's all around her, the cold trying to work its way in the way she's used to her magic trying to force its way out. She comes up comes up hollering, then gasping and shuddering all over from the cold, and treads water for a few minutes to try to warm her limbs back up, and to give herself a chance to catch her breath.

She's only just starting to get it back when there's a sound in the brush, like something crashing through it, coming towards the river's edge. She sinks down lower in the water and summons her magic until she can feel it crackling between her fingers, eager to be released. She holds it in check and waits to see what's interrupted her bath, whether it's a predator or perhaps a boar come looking for a drink, or something less worrisome.

The crashing grows louder and it's nearly reached the river when she hears the sound of her name over it, Phi's voice calling, "Quil? Quil!", not like she's worried that Quil's run off while left unattended, but like she fears something's befallen her. 

Quil sinks deeper into the pool until the water laps around her throat like a necklace and her hair drifts across the surface of the water, surrounding her like a veil. "I'm here," she calls as Phi bursts through the trees, looking wild-eyed and desperate and with a sword bared in her hand, like she means to use it to fight off whatever manner of man or beast might have made have made her shout so. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to alarm you. The water was cold, and I couldn't help it."

Phi's gaze casts about, searching for her, until it drops far enough to notice her down on the water's surface, and the panic in her expression clears all at once -- not into annoyance at being frightened needlessly, as Quil might have expected, but into a swamping relief that turns just as fast to chagrin.

She turns abruptly, putting her back to Quil and dropping her sword to her side. "I'm sorry, I-- I thought you were in trouble. I'm intruding, I should--"

Quil sinks just a little further into the water, until it laps at the point of her chin and even her shoulders are covered, just in case Phi risks another glance, and another attack of mortification. "I'm nearly done. I'll be back at camp shortly, and you can have your turn."

Phi nods without turning. "The fire's going well. You can sit by it when you're done, and it'll help dry you out."

Quil frowns a little. Her hair swirls about her as she treads water to keep herself afloat, making curls and spirals about her like arcane ruins scrawled upon the water's surface. "Isn't there something I can do to help with supper?"

"Tend the fire, and see it doesn't go out. I found a grouse nest when I was looking for wood for the fire, so we'll at least have eggs for our supper. And fish, if I happen to spot any while I'm bathing, though it's early for them to be feeding in force. But there's not much to be done yet either way. The fire needs to die down a bit before we put the eggs on the coals to cook."

Quil nods, then flushes when she remembers Phi's back is to her, and she won't be able to see the gesture. She splashes water on her face to cool the heat of her blush. "All right. I'll be there soon."

Phi nods again, still without turning. Her voice turns wry when she says, "I'll try not to interrupt you at your bathing again."

"Please don't worry about it. I shouldn't have yelled."

"Well." Phi clears her throat. "Better a false alarm than the alternative. Do give a shout if there's trouble, though. The woods can be treacherous." She tilts her head to one side like she's considering something. "And so can the river."

"I will," Quil promises, and stays low in the water until Phi has left, her footsteps crunching away through the undergrowth until Quil can't hear them anymore.

Quil finishes washing quickly after that, scrubbing the soap through her hair and then climbing out of the water, shivering on the bank as she washes the sweat and dirt of the road from her skin. Then she plunges under again, scrubs her hands through her hair to get all of the soap out, and climbs out to pull on the clean dress she'd brought to change into. She leaves the soap on one of the boulders, on a dry spot where it won't risk being washed away by the river, and bundles her damp clothes up into her arms and hurries back to their camp, so Phi can have her turn and so she can sit by the fire and let it chase the chill from her bones.

The fire, true to Phi's word, is burning bright by the time Quil returns, its flames dancing up towards the sky and beckoning her close with the promise of warmth. Phi's just feeding the horses when Quil returns, and she glances up at the sound of her footsteps, then away again just as quickly as Quil emerges from the trees. 

"Your turn," Quil says, laying her bedroll out by the fire to sit on. "I can finish that, if you like."

Phi shakes her head and straightens, giving the horse a pat on its neck. "I'm just about finished, but thank you." She dusts her hands off and starts gathering things from her pack, a fresh change of clothes to take with her down to the water like Quil had done. She hesitates just before stepping out of their clearing and into the trees, looking back at Quil with that little frown that's beginning to become entirely too familiar. She opens her mouth like she's going to speak, but then shuts it again without making a sound, shakes her head, and quickly vanishes into the undergrowth. 

Quil turns back to the fire and watches the flames dance, holds her hands out towards it to warm her fingers and marvels at how good it feels, when only days before it was fire that had nearly killed her. Her magic thrums a little against her skin, but it's not really fighting for freedom, not yet. 

She smells like Phi's soap, like her mother's shop, the woodsy scent of the herbs rising off of her as the fire warms and dries her. She shuts her eyes and breathes through it, sets her mother firmly from her mind, and leaves the warmth of the fire to go dig through her pack until she comes up with her brush. She settles down on her bedroll again and brushes through her hair as it dries, and even then continues brushing, to give her hands something to do and to give her mind the easy repetition to be soothed by.

Phi returns, her footsteps announcing her before she's in sight, and Quil folds her legs underneath her and pushes her hair back behind her ears. She'll need to braid it before they sleep or it'll only be a tangled mess in the morning, but that can wait.

Phi slants her a wry, sidelong look as she comes over to join her at the fire. She's damp, her hair hanging in wet strands about her face, and Quil slides over to make room for her on the bedroll beside her, to give her the space that's a little closer to the fire. Phi gives her another look, this time startled, before she lowers herself down to sit carefully on the edge of Quil's blanket and says, quietly, "Thank you."

"I know how cold that water was." Quil keeps her voice light, keeps her gaze on the fire and not the woman sitting beside her. "And how good the fire feels afterward."

Phi doesn't speak, and Quil's not looking at her, so if she nods or gestures, Quil misses it. But they sit in companionable silence together for a time, while Phi works tangles out of her hair with her fingers and the night grows dark around them. And when the fire's died enough that they can stir some coals from its edge, they tuck the eggs that Phi found in amongst them to cook.

It's only a few minutes before the eggs are done, and then they reposition, Quil at the head of her bedroll and Phi at the foot, sitting cross-legged facing one another with the eggs arrayed on the blanket between them, and they choose from the pile and hiss and bounce the eggs from hand to hand until they've cooled enough to be held, and then crack them open and eat them straight out of the shell.

It's strange, to be able to be quiet with someone and be comfortable with it. She'd grown so used to the constant expectation of conversation at court, to Seath's endless demands. And even before that, her mother always hummed as she worked, or made absent comments, or spoke to herself. And Cordelia always chattered like a parrot, flitting about between the two of them as though she couldn't help the flow of words that poured out of her, the way Quil can't stop her magic from breaking free, the way the river can't help but run its course. But this is new, this easy silence where anything they say doesn't break it, but only disrupts it briefly, like a pebble dropped in a pond, forming ripples but then smoothing out again just as quickly.

When they've finished and there's nothing left but the broken eggshells between them, Quil sweeps the smaller fragments off of her blanket and gathers the larger pieces up to carry them away from their camp, so they won't be disturbed by foragers in the night. When she returns, Phi has her bedroll set up on the other side of the fire and is settling herself into it.

"Sleep well, Quil," Phi says. And Quil can't see her past the blinding light of the flames, turning everything beyond it into impenetrable shadows, but she hears the way her voice turns wry and maybe a little amused as she adds, "If you're going to."

Quil stays up a few moments longer to braid her hair, then slides into her own bedroll and shuts her eyes against the dancing light of the fire, and sleeps, eventually.

*

They ride a few days more, following the river as it winds its way through the woods and grows broader and stronger with every brook and stream that joins up with it, until it cuts a broad swath through the trees and they take to riding a short distance away from it, or else they'd never be able to hear one another over the sounds of the river.

And then, at no prompting that Quil can discern, with no landmark or sign to prompt the decision, Phi leads them at midday back to the river's edge, and Quil catches her breath at the sight of it before them, stretching even wider here, though shallower and not running quite so fast. "We'll need to ford across," Phi says, nudging her mount closer to Quil's and lifting her voice so that Quil can hear her over the river.

Quil turns her head to stare at her. " _Here?_ It's too treacherous."

Phi shakes her head. "It's the easiest place to do it within several days' ride. There aren't any real rapids, and the water's low enough that the horses will be able to keep their footing through it. If we try further downstream, any one of us or them might get swept away by the current."

Phi reaches across the space between them and catches her hand. "Don't worry. I won't let you drown." And Quil stares at her, because she's speaking strangely again, like the inflection is meant for different words entirely.

Really, though, there's nothing for it but to do as she's told, though the water looks far too wide to ever hope to ford safely, and nudging her mare forward into the river's edge feels like the worst sort of foolishness, more needlessly risky than anything she's ever done with her magic.

Her mare does not seem terribly concerned, though, and only snorts at the water a little and tests her footing before she forges ahead. Phi rides beside them and they make slow, cautious progress into the river. Quil remembers what Phi told her at the first stream they forged, and tries hard to stay relaxed on the mare's back and to keep from gripping onto the reins, even as the water climbs up past her fetlock, past her knees, even as the occasional turbulent bit of water leaps up to brush against the mare's belly, and Quil has to pull her knees up to keep her own hooves from getting wet.

Phi reins her horse to a stop just as they reach the middle of the river, water stretching on either side of them. Quil twists in her saddle, frowning back at Phi, her magic thrumming against her skin as her pulse races and her breath comes just a little bit quicker. It's the deepest, most treacherous part of the river, and they've made it this far. Every step they take now is going to bring them closer to land. Why is she _stopping?_

"Stop here," Phi says when Quil doesn't, and leans far out of her saddle, reaching to catch Quil's reins and pull her mare to a stop as well. The mare snorts and tosses her head, displeased at being kept in the icy water, but obeys and stands still. "Stop."

"Why?" Quil has to lift her voice in order to be able to be heard over the rush of the river around them. "What are we doing?"

Phi shakes her head. She wraps her horse's reins around one hand and, before Quil realizes what she's doing, before she can stop her or voice a protest, Phi swings a leg over the horse's back and drops down into the water between them.

"What are you _doing?_ " Quil grabs a handful of her mare's mane and leans down, stretching, reaching for Phi. "You'll be swept away!"

Phi just shakes her head again. "Come down here. _Now_ , Quil, get down here, quickly."

Quil laughs wildly. It's impossible, what Phi's asking of her. It's _senseless_. She leans farther out, grabbing for Phi, but she's just out of reach. "Take my hand! You can ride behind me."

Phi does reach out and catch Quil's flailing hand in hers. She laces their fingers together but doesn't doesn't let Quil reel her in. When Quil pulls at her, trying to get her closer to her mare so she can pull herself up onto her, Phi pulls back. Quil's balance is already precarious, and she's no match for Phi's strength. Her fingers slip on the mare's wet mane and she tumbles out of her saddle and into the river, and her shriek is drowned out by the waters closing over her head.

The waters around them are turbulent, even with the bulk of the horses' bodies helping to shield them from the worst of it, and Quil can't see anything except a spray of bubbles through the water and Phi's hand still cinched tight around her wrist. She struggles, struggles desperately, expecting at any moment for another hand to plunge down and join the first, to grasp Quil and hold her under water and she doesn't know why Phi would kill her now, here, so cruelly, when she had so many better opportunities while they traveled, but she reaches for her magic and drops all her defenses, prepares to send it lashing out, a weapon a fierce as Phi's sword, and one that cares for nothing except that she _lives_.

Before she can gather it up and loose it, Phi's hand tightens on Quil's wrist and she hauls her up, gasping, out of the water. She grips both hands on Quil's shoulders and braces her against the warm, shuddering strength of the mare's flank behind her. " _Stop._ " Her voice is commanding and it cuts through the panic and desperation. Quil's hands are closed around Phi's wrists and she's not even sure if she means to hold her tight or throw Phi's hands from her so she can flounder her way to freedom. "Stop, Quil! Listen to me. _I won't let you drown._ "

It's completely ridiculous to be reassured by _that_ , when Phi's the one who dragged her from her seat and into the water, when all she really has to do right now is open her hands and let the river sweep Quil away to be done with this whole farce. But Phi's hands stay tight on her and she crowds Quil in against the horse's side in a way that makes her feel a little more secure, a little less like one small change in the river's current could drag her under. Phi's as wet as Quil is, gasping almost as hard, she looks just as frantic as Quil feels, and that's steadying. Quil gulps air into her lungs and frees one hand from Phi's wrist to shove her sodden hair out of her face, and releases her grip on the magic she'd meant to bend and twist and shape around her. It settles back under her skin, barely, restless now at having been teased with the chance for freedom only to be denied it.

All at once, now that terror has left her, anger comes rushing in to take its place. She twists against Phi's hold, more to register her protest than truly expecting to be able to shake Phi off of her, and slaps her hand against the surface of the water. "What are you _doing?_ " she demands, vibrant with fury. "What's the _point_ of this? If you're going to kill me, just be done with it!"

Phi's expression twists with frustration and disbelief. "I'm not going to kill you. Gods above! I'm trying to _save_ you."

Quil stops fighting abruptly and stares at Phi, her hair dripping into her eyes, her mare shifting unhappily behind her. "Why? Why would you do that?" Before Phi can answer, she shakes her head abruptly. "You _can't._ Seath'll know I'm alive, he'll know you betrayed him. He'll come for me anyway. He has diviners—"

"I know." Phi's hands tighten on her abruptly. "I _know,_ Quil. He can see anything we do, know anything we say. No matter where in the realm we are, he can watch us." Her hands tighten on Quil's shoulders, nearly painful, then one releases entirely. "Except here." She splashes her free hand through the water that's rushing all around them. "It's the widest part of the whole river. Their magics can't see through it. This much free-flowing water in all directions and we're invisible. He can't see us here, or hear what we say. So _listen to me._ "

Quil snaps her mouth shut and stares at Phi, blinking, her lungs heaving for air.

"We're going to be parted in the river," Phi says, talking quickly, so Quil can't interrupt. "As far as Seath is going to know, that's what happened. I misjudged the current and our horses got swept out from under us and we got separated. I'm going to search along the river long and hard, trying to find you, but I'm going to come up empty-handed, and eventually I'm going to have no choice but to give up and return to the palace, and tell him that you drowned in the river. And you are going to continue on alone, and you're going to follow the river north until it branches to the east, and then you're going to follow that branch for two days until you reach a stone bridge with a narrow footpath crossing it. You're going to follow that path south as far as you can, and when it curves you're going to keep traveling due south until you find a house with a man in it who goes by the name of Terry. You're going to tell him I sent you to him, and when he asks, you're going to tell him everything. Do you understand me, Quil?"

Quil nods quickly and wipes her hands over her face. "Follow the river north, then east. South at the stone bridge until I find a house. Ask for a man named Terry."

Phi's hands tighten on her again. "And?"

Quil swallows against the lump of fear in her throat. She can't, she _can't_. Not even Phi knows everything, how is she supposed to tell it to some stranger she knows nothing about? But Phi is still staring at her intently, waiting, and the river is still rushing around them and Seath still wants her dead. What choice does she have? "Tell him everything," she echoes on a whisper, scarcely loud enough to reach Phi across the scant distance between them.

Phi nods once, satisfied. "If he doubts you, tell him--" She breaks off, frowning for a moment, then releases a hand from Quil's shoulder to pull at the laces of the vambrace on her other arm. She loosens it just enough to slide it up her forearm, revealing her wrist and a gold bangle with delicate flower-and-ivy engravings across it. "Tell him I showed you this. He'll know what it means, that I trusted you with that."

"All right," Quil says, her voice small. She's known for days that she was riding towards her death, and yet this scares her more than anything has since they left the palace behind them. "Phi... Phi, he won't be glad that you lost me. There'll be retribution."

Phi's mouth is flat and her expression is bleak. She knows. As much as Quil does, she knows what Seath is capable of, and how quick his temper is to flare. "I'll be fine," she says quickly. "Tell it to me once more."

Quil repeats the instructions once more, and Phi nods again. "Go," she says, and her hands release their grip on Quil so suddenly that Quil flounders, panic at being swept away surging up in her once more even though there's still the mare behind her, a bulwark against the current. "I'll watch from here until I see you've made it to the shore, and then I'll take the horses downstream and play at dragging myself ashore and starting to look for you, in case Seath's diviners are watching. It's going to make for a wet and miserable journey, but keep to the shallows of the river as much as you can, for as long as you can. With any luck, I'll be back in the palace giving news of your death before you reach the bridge, and no one will be looking for you by the time you have to leave the river behind."

"All right," Quil says again, because what else is there to say? The river seems no less vast now that she's down in it, now that she's faced with the prospect of having to swim it instead of ford it on horseback. She's half convinced that it'll take her feet out from underneath her and carry her away the moment she leaves the protection of this meager shelter between the two horses, and then when Phi tells Seath that Quil's drowned it won't even be a lie. But what else is there to do?

She starts to slide out from between Phi and the mare, but then hesitates just at the horse's neck, and holds onto it against the current as she turns back. "Phi..." How can her throat feel so dry, when she's surrounded by enough water to drown a thousand times over in? "What were you meant to do to me? If he only wanted me dead, he'd have had you do it outside the city walls, and not bothered with this ruse. What did he tell you to do?"

Phi's expression looks so, so solemn. She looks like maybe she isn't going to answer her, and then she blows out a sharp breath and her mouth is flat and grim when she says, "There's a circle of stones in the eastern forest, with runes inscribed onto them. It's said they'll bind a person's magic to their physical form so strongly that even death cannot rend them apart. He wanted me to stand you in the center of those stones and cut out your heart. I'm supposed to bring it back to him, that he might eat it, and take your power into himself."

Quil shuts her eyes briefly and shudders. "Thank you," she breathes, and it feels so horribly inadequate. She opens her eyes again and stares at Phi across the distance between them. "Phi... _thank you._ "

Phi inclines her head in acknowledgment and the corner of her mouth twitches as though with the faintest hint of a smile. "Go," she says. "Live, and be well. That's all the thanks I need from you."

Quil gathers up all her courage, and turns, and begins to swim.

She doesn't look back, doesn't let herself do so. She trusts Phi to be there, to be watching, to be ready to swim after her if the water overtakes her. 

The moment she's out from between the horses, the current grabs her like a fist, dragging her with it. Panic bubbles up in her, and her magic with it, yearning to lash out like a cornered animal afraid for its life. She shoves both instincts down, ruthlessly. There's no time to indulge in either of them, not if she wants to live, and so she kicks her feet behind her and swims as hard as she can, and doesn't think about how far the river has already swept her downstream, doesn't think about the rocks that might be lurking under the water's dark surface, absolutely does not think about Phi watching her from upstream and at what point Phi might decide that she can't do it on her own, and come after her. 

She's gasping and her arms and legs are trembling and she feels more than half-drowned by the time she feels the river's rocky bottom beneath her feet, and she comes staggering up out of the water, and collapses onto her hands and knees there where the river's edge laps at the bank, sucking air into her straining lungs. She stays there, bent over, shuddering, chilled through to the bone as her wet dress clings to her and her sodden hair drips rivulets across her neck and her face and down her arms.

She glances back, then, because she can't help herself. And she can see the shape of Phi still in the middle of the river, carefully leading the horses downstream towards where Quil has washed up, and then past. Quil shoves her hair out of her face and frees it from where it's tangled around her horns, and sits in the water and scrubs her wet hands over her face, and watches Phi's progress. There's little enough she'll be able to do if anything goes wrong, but Phi watched her to make sure she was safe, and Quil can't stomach the thought of doing anything less.

She travels far downstream, and it takes her much longer than it took Quil to be pulled as far as she was, because she and the horses are picking their way down and being careful about it. But Quil's still trembling, unsure now whether it's exhaustion or nerves or the chill of the water that she's still sitting in, like a child splashing about in a puddle, and so she tells herself that it would be foolish to try to get to her feet and start traveling. _In a moment,_ she tells herself, watching Phi's steady progress downstream. _When I've caught my breath._

Eventually, the river curves, and Phi and the horses disappear around it. And Quil's breathing has steadied, and so there's nothing for it but to pick herself up, wring as much of the river out of her hair and her dress as she can, and begin to pick her way north along the pebble-strewn bank.

The wet stones are slick beneath her hooves, and it makes the going treacherous. More than once she slips and doesn't manage to catch herself, ends up sprawling back in the water on her hands and knees, swearing beneath her breath and wishing a hundred different curses upon Seath's head. But she doesn't have the luxury of dwelling on her anger, not right now, not with Phi doing her best to make sure that Seath thinks she's dead. She has to follow the river, she has to find the bridge, she has to get to this man named Terry, or else it's all going to be for nothing.

She struggles her way upstream until there isn't enough light left to see by, and even the moon's bright face is hidden behind the tops of the trees. And then she stops, swaying on her feet with the water lapping around her fetlocks, the hem of her dress wet and heavy with it. Phi said to stay in the river, said the water was what kept Seath's diviners from being able to see them. She said she needed time to get back to the palace and tell everyone Quil was dead, so they'd stop looking for her. If Quil leaves the water before then, they might look for her and see her. They might know she's alive, and they'll know Phi lied, and it'll all be for nothing. 

She said it was going to be wet and miserable, and Quil is already that. Every inch of her yearns for the warmth of a fire, for dry clothes on her back, for a bedroll to wrap up in.

She doesn't have a bedroll, or a flint. She has the clothes she's wearing and nothing else, just as if she _had_ washed up on the river's banks half-drowned. But even if she had them, she can't leave the water to gather wood or build a fire, or lay out her bedroll and sleep in it. 

She makes her way carefully, hands stretched out before herself to feel her way forward so she doesn't run into anything, until she finds a large stone sitting in the river's edge, big enough that she can sit at its base in the shallow waters, and lean back against it, and take some shelter from the wind, and at least rest a little. There's a little warmth from the day still caught in the stone, seeping out from it, and she presses against it gratefully and tries not to think of how cold she is, or how hungry, or how great a distance still waits ahead of her.

Morning finds her huddled in on herself, shivering hard and having managed very little sleep at all. Still, it's almost a relief when the thin, cool light of early dawn filters through the trees and glimmers across the river, enough at least to see by, and she can rise and wring the water out of her skirt and resume making her way north, moving briskly despite her exhaustion to try to warm herself with the exercise.

She learns, quickly, to tuck her skirts up into her belt, so they're out of the water and can have at least a chance of drying out in the growing warmth of the day. She learns to pause at every stone she passes that's big enough to stand out of the water, and press her fingers to its sun-warm surface, to steal some of that warmth back into herself, to combat the constant chill of the water about her legs. She learns to let her hair out of its braid and spread it around her shoulders like a veil, where the dark strands soak up the sun's rays and warm her shoulders like a cloak.

She's still wet, still cold. She's so hungry her stomach feels as though it's cramped itself into a knot, and as she pushes herself through the cold and the hunger and the exhaustion, she feels shaky with it, and has to slow to pick her way carefully lest she slip and tumble into the water and get soaked through again.

She doesn't know how much progress she's making, can't know, but the river hasn't split yet, and she thinks about Phi, thinks of her racing back to the palace to report Quil's death, racing towards Seath's fury and his retribution, trying to get there before Quil leaves the river. It doesn't help warm her, or satisfy her aching stomach. It doesn't make any part of this easier, but it does fuel Quil's determination, makes her tighten her jaw and push through the misery because whatever form that retribution is going to take, Quil's not going to let her face it for naught. It at least has to mean something, be _for_ something.

When night comes again, Quil finds as sheltered of a place as she can to settle down and wait out the darkness. She shivers harder than she had the night before, she thinks, and she presses her face to her knees and wraps her arms about her calves and tries to hold as much warmth within herself as she can.

As the long, cold hours of the night stretch on and her shivering grows too strong to control, Quil's magic stirs and shifts within her, presses up against her skin like an offering. She tries to grasp it, to clutch it to her and hold it back -- the last thing she needs is for her magic to slip loose of her and create another conflagration, here where there will be no clerics to coax her back from the brink of death. _No,_ she thinks, sternly, and tightens her grip. _It's not that cold. I'm not that weary._

Her magic presses harder, insistent. And as the night wears on, her misery grows, and her determination wanes like the moon. She thinks, _Maybe just a little, just a drop, to make this easier._ She thinks, _At least if I go up in flames, I won't be cold anymore._

Another hour, perhaps, passes and she doesn't have the strength of will to keep her magic in check any longer. But it doesn't tear out of her the way that she's used to, doesn't grasp the fabric of the world around her and rend it in two. It dances across her skin, dances like sparks between her fingers, and seems like it's waiting for direction, waiting to be shown how best it can be of use.

_Use,_ she thinks, and nearly laughs, bitter and ugly. What a change it would be for her magic to be _useful_ to her, instead of only a burden.

_Well, then,_ she thinks. _If you want to be of use..._ And she takes the edge of her dress between her fingers, just where it curves around her neck, and she thinks of the warmth of the sun beating down on her, thinks of the heat that comes off of a fire, thinks of the stone that had warmed in the sun and then given its heat back to her when she'd pressed her palms to it. She holds all that in her mind, and tries not to be afraid, and she carefully, gently nudges her magic forward, into the woven strands of the fabric.

Steam rises gently from the garment, and in moments it's dry and toasty against her skin, as though it had been laid out to warm in front of a fire, the way a servant might on an icy winter day. And she's still _sitting_ in water, she's not warm, not like she wants to be. But oh, even this much feels like a blessing, and when her magic slips back into her skin and curls in the center of her and settles, like a cat pleased with its work for the day, that feels like a blessing too.

It's still a miserable night. But it's slightly less miserable than it would have been otherwise, and she clings to that. And when morning comes and she rises and tucks her skirt up in her belt again, she takes a moment to summon the memory of magic sparking between her fingertips, and presses a hand to her dress again, and in a moment all the water that's soaked into her skirt during the night has evaporated as though it's been hung on a line under the summer sun for hours, and the only part of her that's wet or particularly cold is her hooves. She tips her head back and laughs up at the brightening sky overhead, and resumes her journey following the river upstream. 

 

It's nearing dusk on the third evening when the river branches, the bank that Quil's walking along turning towards the east, following along a narrower tributary that stretches into the distance, while the bulk of the river continues on towards the north. It's a tangible sign of progress, and the strength of that alone is enough to nearly take her legs out from under her. She stands there for a moment, following the track of the river across the landscape, through the nearby foothills and beyond, until it's swallowed up by the dense tree-covered slopes that mark the boundary of the eastern forest. Somewhere along that winding stretch of water is a bridge, and somewhere south of that there's a home where Phi thinks she'll find a shelter, and a man Phi thinks she can trust.

The prospect of that is almost enough to drive her to keep traveling even past when the sun has set and the moon has slid behind the tops of the trees and she can barely see her own hand when she holds it outstretched in front of her, much less see where she's placing her feet. Almost, but that she doesn't think she could bear the cruelty of it if she were to succeed in getting this far from Seath only to fall and break her neck and drown in the river's shallows mere days away from safety.

And so she stops herself, and pushes down her magic when it twists about and fights her, fueled by her frustration and impatience, and she settles down to sit in the water and tries not to shiver too hard as it soaks into her skirts once more. And she leans back against the trunk of a tree that had fallen into the water, though it's not so good a place to rest as against a boulder, as it doesn't hold onto anywhere near the same amount of warmth from the sun. But it's a place to rest all the same, and so she sits there and leans against it hard enough to feel the bark biting into her shoulders and she thinks, inevitably, of Phi, thinks of her traveling to give unwelcome news to a man whose temper she must surely be familiar with, thinks of her traveling alone and with haste and how harm might befall anyone in the woods, even the king's own master huntswoman, and she wishes she knew where she was, and if she was safe. She wonders miserably if she's reached the city yet, if all Quil's shivering and suffering is for naughty because Seath's already been told she's dead.

_Where are you, Phi?_ she wonders, leaning back against the tree to watch the slow progression of the stars overhead, feeling the vastness of the world stretched out around her and how small and alone she is within it. _Why would you do all this for me? Are you suffering? How can you ask me to be worthy of this?_

The night is clear and calm around her, and the stars have no answer for her.

_Quil?_ Phi's voice says, uncertain, as clear as though she were sitting right beside her, and Quil startles so badly she slips on the wet rocks beneath her and sprawls on her back in the water. _Is this you? It must be. Are you all right? Where are you? Have you found Terry yet? No, it's too soon, you must--_

Quil scrambles up off of her back, clutching at the fallen tree as though it's the only thing keeping her from sprawling back into the water, or from flying west towards Phi as fast as her legs will carry her. She thinks maybe it is. "Phi?" _Phi!_

Her pulse thunders like a drum in her ears and she waits, scarcely daring to breathe, but no answer comes. She kicks her hoof at a rock in frustration, sends up a great splash with a clatter as it tumbles out into the current and is carried down back the way Quil had come. _Phi? You can hear me? How can you hear me? Please talk to me, Phi, please, tell me you're all right, tell me Seath hasn't hurt you, tell me I can get out of this gods-cursed water and sleep dry for once, just answer me, please, please._

No one answers her but the chirp of crickets, off in the distance. Quil grabs at her magic and wrenches at it, snarls into the night when it barely rises to her call, contended and listless. _Phi?_ she thinks, trying to drag it out of her and push it out beyond the bounds of her skin. _Phi? Phi? Phi!_

There's no answer echoing through her mind like a voice, no spark of magic across her skin or between her fingertips. _Come on, you stupid, worthless,_ miserable _thing, what's the point of you if you won't_ work? she demands, and flings her magic out as far as she can.

The night is still around her, and her thoughts are racing, are clamoring, but they're all her own. She waits, waits longer than there's any sense to, and then squeezes her eyes shut and presses the heels of her palms hard against them and swears so violently that it startles a sleeping bird up out of a nearby tree.

Morning, when it comes, finds her little rested. She hasn't been sleeping since she and Phi parted, not really, only a few moments snatched here and there, but sitting and resting, if not sleeping, in the evenings has still been helpful, has made it at least a little easier to get to her feet and resume traveling come the morning. But this time she's had little rest, has had hours of frustration brewing like a storm inside her chest, fits of anger breaking through her like flashes of lightning because it's stupid, it's so _stupid_ that she has this magic in her, with power enough to send a whole courtyard up in flames, but she can't do _anything_ with it, not properly. What's the point of it, if it won't answer her call?

She wishes, brutally, that she could tear it out of her and give it back to whoever or whatever it came from. Better to know she's on her own than to suffer the constant uncertainty and hope of wondering if it will work for her, or if it will set her on fire again.

She rises when it's light enough to see by, in a wretchedly foul mood, and kicks peevishly at the water before continuing her travels east, stomping through the shallows and taking some small satisfaction in the percussive sound of her hooves against the water and stones.

_Come on,_ she thinks, and grabs at her magic and pulls it up to spark and course across her palms. _Don't you dare hide from me now._ And she presses her hands to the fabric of her dress, and pushes the magic into it.

It only makes her angrier when the magic works just as it has before, and her dress warms and her skirt dries. Why _now_ , when it's such a little, meaningless thing? Why heed her call in this but ignore her entirely all through the night as she tried to reforge that brief connection to Phi?

She's angry, and she's desperately hungry, and she's so, so tired of being wet and miserable. She spends half the day bargaining with herself, trying to convince herself that surely Phi must have reached the palace by now, surely she had been about to say that she was, if Quil's magic hadn't dropped the connection so abruptly. Surely Quil can at least get out of the river, can forage for food and build a fire and take just one afternoon to let her poor, sodden hooves warm and dry out.

She doesn't let herself. Phi said to stay in the river until she reaches the bridge and she's going to. But once, just once, she'd like to not be at war with herself. Just once, why can't it be _easy?_

Anger and frustration have given way to despair by the time she stops for the night. She feels as though she's always going to be wet, always going to be walking, always going to be hungry. There's fewer stones here in this part of the river, which makes the walking easier but is going to make the night less pleasant than they've already been. There's no boulder to warm her back against tonight, just a place where the river has eroded the bank enough to make a ledge, a little alcove where she can tuck herself out of most of the current, even though it means leaning back into the mud and the dirt.

_Be safe, Phi,_ she thinks, with the strength of as much magic as she can gather up thrown out behind it. _Don't die for me. Tell him I've drowned, but then leave the palace and don't look back. It's full of nothing but vipers._

She gets no answer, but it's more comforting to think that Phi heard her but simply had nothing to say in response. She settles her back more firmly against the ledge of earth and tangled roots and holds that thought close to her through the night, to warm her.

At dawn, she rises and the back of her dress is caked with mud. She eyes the river unhappily and wonders which would be worse to suffer, the mud or the frigid water. What decides her, ultimately, is the thought of showing up at a stranger's doorstep looking starved and half drowned, and how hard it's already going to be to convince him to take her in and shelter her, and how much more impossible it'll be if she looks like a mud mephit on top of it.

She finds a place with a log stretching out off the bank that she can hold onto, so she won't be swept back downstream by the current, and then she fills her lungs with air, braces herself, and plunges forward into the river, until the water's past her middle and deep enough that she can duck underneath and let the water close over her head.

She scrubs her hands through her hair to start, washing it clean of any mud that might have gotten caked in it during the night, and then she does what she can to rinse the dress clean while she's still wearing it. When she comes out, shivering so hard her teeth chatter, there at least aren't any thick clumps of mud caked to her back, though it still looks as though she's been rolling around in the dirt, bits of it forced so deeply into the fabric that it'll take a proper, vigorous washing to get it out, and even then it might never be presentable again.

She makes her way back to the river's bank, tucks her skirts up out of the water again and summons her magic, sweeps it this time from the crown of her head down, wicking the water from her skin and drying her hair before moving on to drying out the dress. And as the water evaporates from the dress, the mud cracks and flakes from it, too, down to settle on the water's surface and drift around her fetlocks, until all she has to do is give the fabric a tug and a shake and it looks as clean as the first day she wore it.

She gives a sharp shock of laughter, quickly muffled behind the fingers that she presses to her mouth, and forgives her magic, just a little, for its betrayal.

The river gets narrower as she follows it east, until it might more properly be called a large stream, and the banks are steeper and the waters more turbulent, and there are rarely shallows for her to walk in. Continuing upstream becomes much more a matter of climbing than of walking, picking her way up and over the ledges and embankments that the water has coursed down, and it's grueling work when she's had nothing to eat in days but she pushes on with renewed vigor because this, finally, is beginning to look like the sort of waterway that one might be able to build a stone bridge to cross.

At night, she finds a place to settle herself while still keeping her feet in the running waters, and she looks up from drying her dress out as much as she's able and catches a bit of moonlight illuminating a shape at the base of a nearby tree, something smooth and white that resolves itself, as she frowns at it, into a cluster of mushrooms growing from the earth between the trees roots.

Quil catches her breath and, all at once, is so hungry and so shaky with it that she's not certain she could get to her feet even if she tried. She leans out, stretching towards it, but it's just out of reach. And she stares at it, her stomach aching, and thinks that she could just get out of the water for a _moment,_ couldn't she? It'd take her seconds, nothing more, to climb out and gather the mushrooms, and then she'd come right back, and it's the middle of the night, surely Seath's diviners won't be looking for her _now?_ Surely just a few seconds wouldn't hurt, and she'd have at least a little food in her belly, to help her get the rest of the way.

She nearly does it. Her resolve nearly crumbles, and she's not proud to realize that what decides her isn't the knowledge that doing so would jeopardize everything Phi has risked herself for. Instead, it's the slow, insidious thought: _Would I be able to tell a poisonous mushroom from a good one, if it was right in front of me? If I held it in my hand? Would I have any idea, before it was too late?_

_No,_ she thinks at once, ruthlessly. _If I'm going to die, it's going to be because Seath killed me. I won't do his work for him. I've fought so hard to survive everything he's thrown at me -- I can fight a little longer still._ And she turns her back to the tree and the cluster of mushrooms growing at its feet, and resolutely doesn't think about it again all night.

In the morning, she stands and sweeps her magic through to dry and clean herself, and starts to ford her way upstream once more, and she clambers over the next tumble of rocks that the stream has poured itself over and then stops, squinting through the dappled light thrown by the trees overhead, because she can almost make out something in the distance that looks like stone where there ought to be water or trees, something that looks too regular to be part of the stream or the woods around it.

She rushes forward, too fast, and her hooves slip and scramble on the slick rocks and mud underneath, and she ends up on her hands and knees in the water more than once, but she just picks herself up and throws herself forward still, and doesn't even stop long enough to dry herself first.

The stream bends a little, and the ground levels out, and there's a spot where the trees aren't crowded up quite so close to the banks and she can see ahead for a stretch and it's there, it _is_ , a lovely little stone bridge arcing from one side of the stream to the other, with a beaten-down footpath stretching into the woods on either side, and Quil gives a desperate sob and runs, heedless of the danger of twisting an ankle when she's so close to her destination, and she throws herself in against its side and clutches at it, gasping for breath and with relief and an overwhelming wave of desperate gratitude.

There isn't as much direct sun here as there was along the river, where it stretched wide enough to let the sun's rays through, but still the stone feels a little warm to the touch and she leans there for a moment just grateful for the warmth, for the reprieve, before she gathers herself up and gathers her magic to her, and throws it out as she thinks, _I'm at the bridge, Phi, I'm here. If you haven't reached the palace tell me now because, oh gods, I want out of this water._

She receives no answer, no reassuring voice in her head telling her that all's well, that she can leave the water safely and there will be no diviners searching for her. She waits there a few moments, giving Phi time, just in case. And when she hears nothing but her own labored breathing and the burbling of the stream around her legs, she takes a deep, determined breath and decides that there's nothing for it. She can't stay in the water forever. She needs to dry out, needs to warm up, needs to _eat,_ dear gods above. She's just going to have to trust in Phi, trust that she reached the palace in time, trust that she's doing what she can there to protect Quil.

She climbs up out of the stream, gripping onto the edge of the bridge to keep her balance on the steep, uneven slope. And as soon as she has both feet on dry land, she grabs at her magic and sweeps it over her, head to toe, until there isn't a single bit of her that's still damp. And she's not _warm_ , not precisely, not when the river has been stealing the heat from her bones for days now, but it's better. It's so, so much better.

As soon as that's done, she turns towards the woods that line the banks of the stream and starts pushing through it, gathering fallen branches and twigs up into her arms until she has enough to make at least the start of a fire, and she carries them back to the stream's edge and the bridge and the start of the footpath, where there's at least a little bit of space between the trees to build her fire without worrying about setting the treetops ablaze over her head with an errant spark.

She doesn't have a flint, or anything to strike it with. But she stacks the wood carefully the way she's been taught, building a shape that will feed the fire instead of smothering it. And then she sits there cross-legged in front of it, her hands outstretched before her, and she frowns a little as she thinks of that night in the palace courtyard, of the magic that had poured from her and how it had set fire to the air around her. She thinks about how it had felt, the magic jumping off her skin and twisting into flames, and she stares at the wood before her, and she thinks to herself and her magic how dry it is, how easy it would be to spark and catch, how it's _waiting_ for it, all it needs is a nudge in the right direction--

Magic crackles and snaps around her fingers, gathers itself up and bursts from her all at once, streaking away from her outstretched hands and setting the air on fire behind it. It crashes into the wood of the campfire and bursts there, a sudden flare of light and heat, and when Quil blinks the stars out of her vision, she can see a glow coming from within the heart of the structure, the slender twigs and bits of dried pine needles smoldering and smoking before, finally, catching. Small tongues of flame dart out to lick at the larger branches braced above them, charring them black, and then tipped grey with ash, and then catching as well, and the flames build and climb until the fire is burning merrily before her, a warm, bright beacon that Quil stretches her hands and her feet toward to warm through. 

She's dry, she's warm, and with those two needs satisfied her hunger rises up to remind her of its presence, grabbing hold of her, and all at once she scrambles up to her feet and goes back into the woods, searching for bushes that might have berries or trees that might have nuts scattered around their roots. She remembers Phi saying she'd found the eggs they'd shared in a grouse nest on the forest floor, and so she casts her gaze about for that, too.

She's been searching long enough that she's starting to think she should make her way back to the fire and ensure it doesn't need to be fed, and she's found only a handful of berries. They're unripe, still half green, but even so, the sour burst of them on her tongue is heady, buoys her spirits and her energy reserves. She's just about to turn back, to content herself with that and be glad, at least, that her belly isn't completely empty, when her passage startles a bird up from a bush near her, chittering and flapping and scaring Quil almost as badly as she scared it. She spins about and throws her hands out without thought and fire bursts from her, streaking toward the bird with that familiar crackling sound.

The fire crashes into the side of the bird as it tries to fly up to the treetops, and the bird drops like a stone. Quil stares at where it had been, gaping, her palms tingling and itching just a little. And then she recalls herself and her hunger and her belly that has been empty for days now, and she scrambles through the brush towards where the bird fell, searches until she finds it, caught up in the tangle of a scrubby bush, motionless and with its feathers half-scorched along one side.

"Oh," she breathes, grimacing down at it as she picks it up, at the blackened remains of feathers and the charred skin beneath it. She tries not to remember the searching, screaming pain as her own flames had consumed her, back in the palace courtyard. It wasn't the kindest way to go. "I'm sorry," she whispers to the bird, guilt twisting through her because she _is_ sorry, a little, but she's also grateful.

She makes her way back to where she'd been when she startled the bird and searches through the bushes there, too, just in case it had been guarding a nest, but turns up nothing after a few moments, and she does still need to tend to the fire, so she carries the bird back to it, and gathers a few larger branches along her way.

The fire's still burning well when she returns to it. She lays a few of the branches she gathered onto it, to give it something to sustain it, and lays the rest beside the fire for later. She settles down beside it, perhaps a bit too close, but her body still remembers the days of horrible cold, and so the prickle of the fire's heat only feels like a comfort, where ordinarily it might have driven her back a few feet to a more moderate distance.

She plucks the feathers from the bird and leaves them in a growing pile at her feet, and when it's bare she leaves it at the fireside and ventures back down to the stream, searching along its banks until she finds a stone that had broken at some point during its tumble through the waters, and with a sharp enough edge that she thinks she can make use of it. She carries the rock with her back to the fire, and sits with it and the bird on her lap, and begins to try to gut and clean it.

It's messy, inexact work, but the bird doesn't need to be fit for the king's table, after all, and there'll be no one but herself to know how she had to hack at it to clean it out. When at last she's satisfied, she fashions a spit for the bird the way she and Phi had done for the fish, and sets it over the fire to cook. And while she waits, she dances her magic across her fingertips and into the fabric of her dress and whisks away all the mess and stains that it had acquired while she'd cleaned the bird.

It seems a luxury to have nothing at all to do while the bird cooks but to stretch out beside the fire and warm herself. She could gather more firewood, but there's enough to last for a bit and she doesn't want to leave her breakfast unattended and risk it being stolen away by scavengers. She could forage for more to eat, but she's weary down into the depths of her bones and she can't quite make herself rise from where she is.

She doesn't mean to nod off, but when she jolts back to awareness the light around her is changed, the sun in a different part of the sky. The fire has died down somewhat, though not dangerously so, and the bird is done cooking, if not perhaps overdone.

She snatches it from the fire and lays a few of the branches she'd set aside onto it, to build the flames back up. And she scarcely waits for it to cool, can't quite bring herself to care about the sting in her fingertips as they burn slightly, before she starts to strip the meat from the bones and eat, with all the voracious hunger that had stayed mostly banked within her through her whole journey upstream.

 There's a part of her that wants to search for any excuse to linger, to stay warm and dry and resting by the fire. She's hungry still, even when there's nothing left of the bird but a pile of bones to match the pile of feathers, and she's weary from days of scarcely sleeping, and she could stay and hunt for more food and sleep for hours, and no matter that it's scarcely midday.

But somewhere south of her there's a house in the woods with a man Phi trusts, and somewhere to the west of her there's Seath and his diviners, who may still be looking for her, who certainly are wroth with Phi for failing to bring back Quil's heart. And it's the certainty of that that pushes past Quil's hunger and her exhaustion, that drives her to her feet once the fire's burned down most of the way and her stomach has settled, grudgingly content with what she's put in it.

She thinks of gathering one of the coals up, banked in ashes and wrapped in wet leaves, to carry with her and start her fire from once she stops for the night. She stands there beside the fire and frowns at it and _wants_ to, desperately, so bone-weary at the thought of spending the night cold without a fire to warm herself beside. But she thinks of the magic shooting fire out from her hands, twice now, and neither of them the wild conflagration that nearly consumed her, and she looks at her hands and feels for her magic and she thinks, very deliberately, _I trust you. You're going to work for me tonight._

And, on the heels of that thought, despite herself, _Please, gods, don't make me regret this._ And she carts up wet sand and mud from the stream to smother the fire with, and starts off along the footpath, heading south.

There isn't much daylight left for her to make use of, even though it's early afternoon when she sets out. The trees crowd close around the narrow path, and their canopies begin to block the sun out when it's scarcely past its zenith. But there are few stones scattered along the path to trip her, and none of them wet. There's a packed, smooth path beneath her feet cutting a mostly-straight line through the woods ahead of her, and she's warm from the exertion, properly warm, almost uncomfortably so. And so it's easy to push on even when it becomes difficult to see much of the path ahead of her, to push on perhaps past when she should have, and when she does stop for the evening she's left rooting through the fringes of the woods on either side of the path, squinting through the thickening darkness to try to find branches and twigs dry enough to build a fire from. 

It's not the most elegant fire she's ever built, but it'll do the job, she thinks. If her magic cooperates. She settles down cross-legged beside it, chewing her lip, reluctant to reach for her magic and try to summon the flames forth because, so long as she doesn't try it, it can't fail her.

_The night's not getting any warmer,_ she thinks, tightening her jaw. _And haven't you spent enough of them shivering already?_

She takes a breath to steady herself and reaches deep within for the magic that's curled there, like it's waiting.

It leaps to her the moment she grasps for it and she almost recoils, startled and frightened by its eagerness, so sure it's going to burst from her like it had in the courtyard. But it doesn't, it just gathers beneath her skin, prickling like the warmth of a strong fire does when you reach your hands out towards it. And so she does the same, reaches her hands toward the fire she's built, that's just waiting for the spark to set it aflame. And as she spreads her fingers wide like she's warming them on the nonexistent flames, all at once they're there, glowing bright against her palms before they streak away and burst against the firewood.

The bigger logs char, but her kindling catches and ignites, and she sits beside it blinking back desperate, relieved tears as it builds and grows until everything is burning, a warm, bright beacon against the darkness. 

She sidles closer to the fire, closer than she ought, until her cheeks prickle with the heat and the smoke scents the air with every breath she takes, but it's so good to be warm. And her magic did this, leapt to her command when she asked it to the way it had with the fire earlier, the way it had with the bird and with the water soaking her dress. And she thinks maybe, maybe _now_ it will behave, maybe now it's feeling generous enough to do as she asks of it, and so she shuts her eyes against the glow of the fire and she thinks of Phi, so far away from her, trapped in a palace with a man who wishes her ill. And Quil knows what that's like too well, she _knows_ , and she knows how desperately she could have used a friend in the midst of that viper pit. She reaches for her magic and grasps great big handfuls of it and thinks, _Please, for her, please,_ and she casts it out, casts it toward the west, imagines it streaking across the hills and forests between them, imagines it snaking through the halls of the palace until it finds Phi and takes root in her, and she squeezes her eyes shut and thinks, with the strength of everything in her, _Please tell me you're all right. Tell me he hasn't hurt you. I'm on the path south, I'll find Terry, just tell me you're okay._

She waits, waits, waits. The fire is warm on her face and glowing gold against her eyelids, and she doesn't dare to breathe as she waits. And then, as clear as if she were sitting beside her, she hears Phi's voice in her head, and nearly misses half her words in the desperate, startled sob that bursts from her. _I'm all right. He believes you're dead, I think. You should be safe. You'll find Terry a few days south of you. Tell them I--_

Quil sucks air through her teeth when Phi's voice cuts off and the magical tether she's imagined between them snaps and goes slack, and draws back into her to curl up in her middle. She tries to cast it out again, thinks frantically towards Phi, _What? Tell him what? I'll tell him, just keep it brief, I can't hold this for long,_ but there's no answer and she doesn't expect one, because her magic feels limp and useless in her grasp where moments before it had been vibrant and living.

She hisses out a breath, and opens her eyes to blink against the brilliance of the fire, and she can't even find it in herself to be irritated. It _worked._ It wasn't a fluke, and it wasn't her imagination. It worked, and she's done it twice now. She can do it again. Later, once she's slept, maybe. But if she can do it twice, she can do it a third time, surely she can.

She settles down on her side next to the fire, with a small pile of wood by her head so she can feed it easily through the night, and the whole front of her is warm from the heat it throws out. There's a little chill at her back as the night grows darker and cooler, but it's a far cry from meltwater swirling about her calves. She pillows her head on her arm and curls up enough to pull her feet and her tail beneath the skirt of her dress, for what meager warmth it'll provide, and she shuts her eyes against the fire's glow, and she sleeps almost at once.

*

She wakes a few times through the night, when the fire's burnt down enough that the cold starts to seep into her, but only long enough to crack an eye open and grope out for a log to throw onto the fire, before she shuts her eyes again and curls a little tighter in on herself and goes right back to sleep. She doesn't wake for good until morning, when the sky is blue overhead and birds are chirping somewhere in the woods, and it's not even early morning but morning proper, and she's a little stiff from sleeping on the ground, and there's dirt ground in all along her side and bits of sticks and leaves caught in her hair, but it's the work of a moment to get to her feet and sweep her magic over herself and set all that to rights.

It's almost easy traveling now, even with the hills and inclines that the path leads her over. It's easier by far to trudge along the packed-earth trail than it had been to pick her way up the river bank, with the wet stones underfoot threatening a twisted ankle or worse at every step.

She doesn't spend much time searching for food. Less time than she should, she knows, especially when she's already asked so much of her body, and is asking more still. Especially when she went days with nothing at all in her belly but icy water scooped from the river around her and sipped from her cupped palms. But Phi said Terry was only a few days south of her, and to promise of that, of an end to her journey, of a home to shelter her and a roof to rest under, is too alluring for her to sacrifice time that could be spent walking to foraging instead. Still, there's a fire to build every night, and she keeps her eyes open for berries or birds' nests or birds themselves, something she could easily gather and bring back to the fire with her to eat, and most nights she finds at least a handful of something to tide her over until the next. And she has a fire to warm herself beside every night, and she sleeps, and her magic still burns when she asks it to, still whisks the dirt of the road from her dress and her skin in the mornings. It all feels like a greater luxury than she's ever known, even as a ward of Seath's court, surrounded by riches and finery.

And every evening when she settles down beside her fire, she reaches for the magic twisting and roiling inside her and casts it to the west, towards Phi. Every night, she shuts her eyes and imagines that connection between them, imagines it glowing strong and bright as summer sunshine, and she thinks, _What do you want me to tell him? Be brief, I can't hold this open for long, if it's working at all. But I'll try._

The second night on the southern path, she throws her magic out and thinks those words that have become a mantra to her, and her magic all at once goes slippery in her grasp and slides through it, and the world around her _lurches_ , like falling even though the ground is solid beneath her feet, and when her vision steadies she blinks around her and she's standing on the path but the forest around her is dark and oppressive, and the light of the fire is but a distant glow like a firefly's flicker.

Before she can do more than stare about herself, bewildered and agape, there's an electric charge to the air around her, and the quality of the silence she stands in feels different than before, doesn't feel like absence but like startled consideration. She scarcely has a chance to catch her breath and to start to grow excited when Phi's voice is in her head, in her ears, measured and thoughtful. _Say I'm safe. Tell him to be safe as well. That's what's important. Tell him I miss him-- No,_ added abruptly, almost ruthlessly, her voice gone somehow hard and splintered at once, _don't tell him that, he'll only--_

The connection snaps, and Phi's voice vanishes, and Quil hisses air through her teeth. But it's something, it's more than she had before. And she was complacent about her magic, she ought to know better than that by now, but at least when it slipped her grasp, it didn't set the world aflame around her. It's no hardship at all to walk the path back to her fire, and she finds it just as she left it, the flames still burning merrily, the wood no more burned down than it had been a moment before when she sat at its side.

She sits beside the fire and basks in its warmth, and commits Phi's words to memory so that she can repeat them to Terry precisely, when she finds him. It's the least she can do, considering what she'll be wanting for of him when she shows up on his doorstep asking for shelter, asking for trust.

The next day, not long after she's started out, the footpath curves abruptly ahead of her, cutting east through the woods and leaving her standing facing a wall of trees. There's a voice in the back of her mind that whispers at her to stay on the path, where the walking is easy, where she can stagger forward when exhaustion has her in its grip and persevere, and gain a little more ground. It will be hard going pushing through the untamed woods here, harder maybe even than the river had been, and she's bone-weary at the thought of it.

She stands there for a few moments, knowing what she must do and wishing she could do otherwise. And then she squares her shoulders and hikes her skirt up and steps off the path and into the woods, and begins to push her way through the brush and undergrowth, continuing south.

Two days later, her hunger has caught up with her, even though pushing through the untamed forest means she's had more opportunity to stumble upon food worth foraging. There's less water than while following the river, though, and it's harder going, and it seems that with every other step her dress catches on branches or brambles and she has to stop to dislodge it, and there are rips and tears in the fabric that remain even after she's swept her magic through to clear away the dirt and grime. There are cuts along her calves and her arms and one on her brow that stings ferociously, from when she walked into a branch she didn't notice in the thickening twilight. Every step she takes has to be careful and precise, every one requires lifting her hooves clear of the undergrowth, and it's hard, hot work, and by the second day of it there's no strength left in her anymore, and her legs drag even when she tries to lift them, and her hands tremble where she has them curled around fistfuls of her skirt, holding it up out of the worst of the entangling brush. She feels a little as though she has always been doing this, always been pushing through unending woods, always been exhausted and hungry and desperate, and always will be so. 

She knows, of course, that this is untrue, that she lived a whole life before she ever found herself in these woods. And, too, she knows that it won't be a journey without end, that it can't be. She'll find the house in the woods, and if she doesn't, well. Starvation will find her soon enough. But she hasn't the strength left in her to argue with her heart, and her heart despairs at the endless stretch of woods before her, the endless work that she's demanding of it.

She stumbles forward, her concentration entirely focused on lifting her hooves high enough that they won't tangle and trip her, on keeping her tail curled up and out of the way of the branches that would catch and tear at her thin skin. She braces a hand on the trunk of a tree beside her, to help her stay balanced as she searches for the best place to put her hooves, when there's a loud snap from somewhere nearby, close enough and loud enough to make her jump, to pull her hands from the tree and summon fire into her palms as she whips about, searching for whatever creature has found her and hoping, sick with desperation, that it's something that she can eat.

There's movement in the trees, a shift and sigh of leaves that doesn't match the pulses of the breeze around her, and then a glimpse of blue caught between the branches that Quil might have thought was the sky if she didn't know how thick and endless these woods were.

Whatever it is, it's large. Too large, she thinks, for her fire to do anything but anger it, certainly too large to be taken down in one burst of magic the way the bird had been. And Quil is so tired, she doesn't have the heart for a fight, even if it might mean enough meat to gorge herself on tonight. So she keeps the fire gathered in her palms, in case it's needed, but warily calls out, "Who's there?" and hopes that if it's a beast, the sound of her voice scares it away.

The noises of movement pause, then resume, coming nearer, and Quil braces herself against the tree and builds the fire in her hands, ready to release it. And then a figure steps out from between the trees, tall and cobalt-scaled and with a reptilian face that makes her heart scream, _Dragon!_ before she catches her breath and sees past it, sees the leather armor and the spear grasped in a short-clawed hand, held upright with its end planted in the dirt like a walking stick.

The dragonborn's eyes are wary, and his browridge furrows as he takes her in, an assessing glance from head to hoof that pauses on her hands and the magic crackling there, before he lifts it to meet her gaze. His mouth pulls sideways in a way she doesn't know how to interpret. "I might ask you the same," he says in a low, clear voice, and there's caution there but not outright hostility, not yet, so Quil lets out a breath and releases the magic from her grasp. It stays coiled just under her skin, nervous and ready to be summoned again, but the fire sparking through the air above her palms dies out, and she scrubs her hands on her skirt to chase away the prickle of heat. 

The man's eyes follow her, take in the flames she didn't let loose and the anxious movement, and something in his stance eases a fraction. He looks her over a second time, and this time she feels his gaze catch on the rips in her dress, the cuts on her arms and her brow, the wild tangle of her hair and the lack of any pack at all carried with her. "Are you lost?" he asks her, gentler. "The road is several days north of here. You've gone far astray, if you're looking for it."

Quil shakes her head, voiceless. A bubble of hope rises in her chest, and tears prick her eyes at it because if she's _wrong_ \-- Oh, if she's wrong, she doesn't think she'll be able to bear it. But she licks her lips and tries anyway, because she has to, because Phi said she'd find Terry several days south of the bend in the trail and here she is, and here this man is, who seems to know these woods, and so she asks, her voice abruptly small and unsteady, "Are you Terry?"

All the fledgling sympathy on the man's face vanishes, turned to alarm, and he shifts his weight back from her and adjusts his grip on the spear, not pointing it at her, not quite, but ready to do so, and his voice is as hard and as sharp as the iron point on the spear when he demands, "Who are you? How do you know that name?"

Quil can do little more than gape at him for a moment, her mouth moving but no sounds coming out, and all at once this conversation feels like her magic, gone slippery in her grasp, careening wildly out of her control in a direction she never meant for it to go, and she sees the man's expression, the set curl to his mouth and his ready stance and she knows, she _knows_ that if this spirals out of control now it's going to be just as dangerous to her as her magic is when it's unfettered.

"Please," she gasps, and slides away from the tree so she can stagger backwards, away from this man and the ready violence in his eyes. "Please, I was sent here, I was told to find Terry, please--"

She's moving blindly, not watching her feet because she can't tear her gaze from this man, with his bared fangs and his fighter's stance and the sharp, deadly point of his spear lowering closer and closer to pointing directly at her heart with every clumsy word that tumbles from her lips. And she should know better, she _does_ know better, so it's not even a surprise when something catches on her skirt and there's a branch behind her that catches her hoof when she would stumble back to keep her balance, and she topples backwards into the brush with a crash and the horrible, sickening certainty that she's just lost any chance she had of getting out of this alive.

The man is on her in two long strides, one knee planted in the ground beside her, one hand grasping her by the shoulder of her dress, his spear hefted so he grasps it just behind the pointed blade, leveling it at her like a dagger as he snarls, " _Who?_ Who sent you to us?"

She grasps wildly for her magic, grabs at it and flings it out to take whatever shape it will, hopes it's the thunderous blast that knocked the other man away from her back in Seath's courtyards, hopes even for fire, and she feels it spool out and catch in a way that's starting to become familiar to her by now, and she shuts her eyes on a sob of despair because oh, that's not going to save her.

_Phi,_ she screams along the connection, _Phi,_ Phi, _he's going to kill me, it's all gone wrong, what do I_ do--

Above her, the scales on the man's face shift, his features hardening with resolve. His fingers tighten on Quil's dress, tighten on the spear, and Quil gasps, desperate, "Phi! She told me to come, she said there was a house in the woods, Phi sent me, _please--_ "

And the man's expression transforms.

There's a moment she knows too well, an instant of stillness broken only by Phi's voice in her mind, sharp, demanding, _Quil? What's happened? Talk to me, tell me what's wrong. Gods, say something, I don't know what I can do from here but I can try—_

And Quil can't, even if she could try to grab at her magic and forge that connection again, even if she didn't already know that it wasn't ever something she'd had the strength to do more than once in a day, because dread is thick in her throat and time is frozen around her, that horrible, familiar still moment before tempers or violence or flames explode. And then the man's grip shifts on her, releases her dress only to grab on again, and the steady solidness of the ground beneath her falls away as he hauls her upright.

She grabs at his wrists, struggling to wrench free, but she can't move him. And then he sets her on her feet and holds her there until she's steady on them, and he plants the end of his spear in the earth and takes both her shoulders in his hands.

" _Phi?_ You've seen Phi?" he demands, and his face is like sunrise, the harsh lines of anger and threat melted away beneath the warmth of what she thinks might be relief, if she trusted herself to know how to read dragonborn expressions better.

She takes a moment to swallow down the fear that's choking her, to wet her lips, and when she speaks her voice croaks through her throat but the words come out, all the same. "She told me there's a house in the woods. She told me how to find it, and said to ask for Terry. Are-- Is that you?" _Phi, why didn't you warn me he was going to level a spear at my throat before I got two words out? You let me think I could_ trust _him. Why didn't you tell me to be wary?_

But the man's shaking his head. The set of his shoulders is easing. "I'm not Terry, but I can take you to him." He steps back from her, takes up his spear like a walking stick again, and gestures to her. "Come, follow me. It's not far."

He starts away, using the end of the spear to help push aside the brush in front of him, and Quil stays just where she is, watching him go, still breathing hard and trembling now from top to tail.

The dragonborn takes half a dozen steps before he realizes she isn't behind him. He returns, frowning a little, his head tilted to the side. "Are you all right?"

She is the very farthest thing from all right. "I haven't eaten," she says, her voice quavering, and growing more strident with every word, "not in days, not more than a handful of unripe berries, and I'm so tired, and Phi told me about the house and she told me about Terry but she didn't tell me anything about you, or that you'd try to kill me for asking about him, and _I don't know you_."

His expression shifts as she speaks, a flickering series of emotions too brief for her to put name to, but he doesn't flinch back from her, even when she's practically shouting in his face. And when she's done he lifts the hand that isn't grasping the spear's haft, his palm towards her like he's asking for peace. His voice, when he speaks, is startling in its gentleness. "I'm sorry. You look--" And his gaze flicks over her before coming back up to hold her gaze. "You look as though you've had a hard journey. I wasn't expecting to run into anyone out here, and certainly not a stranger who knew one of our names. And I didn't think of any reason you might have known Terry's, except the worst one." He shifts his pack off of his shoulder and down to the ground, and then crouches to pull it open and rifle through it, moving carefully, like she's a deer he's afraid he'll spook.

_People are only afraid of startling deer when they're trying to hunt them_ , she thinks, surprised to find ice inside her instead of fire.

If he were Terry, Quil would trust him on the weight of Phi's regard alone. But he's not. Phi never mentioned him, and recognizing her name isn't enough to make him trustworthy.

But Phi gave Quil a secret, one she was meant to use to prove herself, and Quil can turn that about just as easily. "What does she have under her vambrace?" she demands, as the man roots through his pack.

He freezes. Slowly, he lifts his head to stare at her, and the absence of expression on his face is too complete to be anything but deliberate. "What did you say?"

Quil sweeps a hand between them, an impatient gesture. " _Phi_. What does she have under her vambrace? If you know her well, you'll be able to answer it."

He stares at her, blinking slowly, one hand curled around the strap of his pack. "She showed you that?"

Quil folds her arms and gives him a smile that's as cold and brittle as winter's first frost. "Showed me what?"

He lets out a sharp breath, all at once. "A bracelet," he says, and Quil lets herself thaw. He lifts a hand to curl his fingers around his own wrist, the same side that Phi wore it on. "Made of gold, with flowers and vines. She _showed_ that to you?"

"She showed me." Quil swallows once and tips her head to the side. "What does it mean?"

He shakes his head slowly and rubs his knuckles across his brow. "That she trusts you," he says, but the way he says it makes it sound like he means something else entirely. Something more.

Before she can ask what, or why, he ducks his head to look into the pack. "I've a waterskin here somewhere. Are you thirsty?"

And she is, she's parched, she hasn't had a proper drink since she left the stream behind. "Yes," she says, "please," and she sits while he looks through his things, until he makes a triumphant sound and draws out a waterskin, heavy and fat with its contents, and offers it to her directly.

She takes it and drinks deeply, drinks until it's nearly empty. And he doesn't say otherwise, just watches her at it for a moment before returning his attention to his pack. And a moment after that, he pulls out a bundle of something wrapped in oilcloth, and unfolds it and holds it out to her.

It's a small pile of strips of dried meat, and it smells as though it's been sharply seasoned. She reaches for one and, when he doesn't snatch it back or snap at her for the presumption, she's emboldened, and she takes a few more, and eats them so quickly that she scarcely tastes them at all.

He smiles at her gently, an off-center, crooked thing, and shifts forward enough to lay the cloth and its contents on her knees, covering her lap. "I didn't intend to be gone long, so I didn't pack much in the way of food. But you're welcome to what there is, and there will be more at Terry's to strengthen yourself with, once you're ready to travel a little farther."

She makes a sound in the back of her throat, and he must take it for as disparaging as she intends it, because it makes him smile a little, and he shifts to sit on the ground instead of crouching there. "Eat and drink your fill," he encourages her. "There's time yet."

She eats everything that's on the oilcloth, and when she's finished with the meat, he gives her an assessing look and digs through his pack again. The parcel he comes up with this time is smaller, but when he hands it to her and opens it up, there are a handful of nuts in it, already shelled. "There, I think that's the last of what I brought with me," he says. "But you're welcome to it, and when you're ready to start walking again, we'll keep an eye out and see if we can find more than some unripe berries for you. Or--" He tips his head to the side and his eyes narrow on her a moment, thoughtful. "If you don't mind a little bit longer of a walk, we can stop by my home first. Iain will be there, and he'll be able to get you properly fed. It's closer than Terry's is, so you won't have to wait quite so long, or walk quite so far on a mostly-empty belly. It's a little out of the way, though, so it'll be a longer walk, all told, to go from there to Terry's than to go to Terry's directly."

Quil considers it as she eats the nuts scattered across her lap. "I've been walking for days," she says at last, with a flippant gesture. "What's a little bit longer? I'm sure I won't mind the travel half so much now I've got some proper food in my belly."

His mouth flattens a little bit at that, and his brows draw down, like he has opinions about whether a handful of dried meat and half a dozen nuts could be called anything like a proper meal. But whatever his thoughts on the matter are, he keeps them to himself, and just nods and says, "Whenever you're ready, then," and settles down on his pack, using it like a makeshift stool, and looks as though he really is content to wait however long it takes for Quil to decide she's ready to move again.

She sighs and picks tiny fragments of nuts from the surface of the oilcloth. She'd happily never walk anywhere ever again, or at least not for days and days, until enough time had passed that she'd forgotten the weariness in her legs and her aching muscles. But she doubts that this man's patience extends quite _that_ far, and there is the prospect of food, after all. So she only picks at it a moment before she sighs again, and then bundles the cloths up and stands to hand them over to the man, and says, "Lead the way, then."

He looks startled, a little, but takes the cloths from her and tucks them into his pack before he hefts it and swings it over his shoulders. Before he starts walking, though, he stands there and just looks at her for a moment before startling her by thrusting one large hand out towards her. "We never did manage to get properly introduced in all of that, did we? I'm Kal. And I am very sorry, by the way, for--" He gestures with his other hand, and his mouth pulls sideways again. "--all of that, back there."

Quil might almost forgive him for it right there, if her heart weren't still jackrabbitting against her breastbone. The best absolution she can manage is to reach across the distance between them and clasp his hand, shake it once, firmly, and offer, "Quil," in return.

Kal nods like he's satisfied with that, and without much more fanfare, takes up his spear and turns and starts making his way into the woods, heading slightly more east than south.

Quil tucks her skirts up so the hem falls closer to her knees than her ankles, out of the way of the worst of what it might tangle and catch in, and follows after him.

*

They walk for perhaps an hour before Quil starts to smell smoke upon the air. And that's a familiar enough sense-memory to make her pulse quicken and her magic stir, but she forces down the panic and keeps walking behind Kal, whose pace has quickened but not, she thinks, with alarm. 

It's not much longer than that before there's a break in the forest, a little clearing that looks like it's been carved out of the woods around them instead of forming naturally, and a house in the middle of it, small and simple but with lights glowing behind the windows and smoke drifting from the stone chimney. And Kal, when she glances at him, is beaming bright enough to bare all his fangs.

She keeps back a pace when Kal strides across the clearing up to the door of the house. There's a cry from inside when he opens the door, a voice calling out, _"There_ you are. I didn't think you'd be gone so long. I thought I was going to have to take this over to Terry without you."

"Sorry," Kal says, and Quil can only see his back, filling up most of the doorway, but she can hear his wry smile in how it colors his voice. "I ran into a spot of trouble."

"What happened?" That voice, that was bright and glad a moment before, has suddenly gone grave. "Are you all right?"

_"I'm_ fine." Kal steps aside, out of the doorway, and Quil can see a man beyond him, frowning at him with a depth of concern shining on his face. He sees Quil, too, and his eyes blink wide and startled for a moment, before settling on cautious uncertainty.

"Oh, hello," he says, his voice pitched to carry to Quil. "You must be the trouble, then."

Quil flushes a little, heat burning across her cheeks. At Kal's gesture, she steps inside, though the little cottage is almost cramped with the three of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder as they are. "It wasn't _my_ fault."

The man's brows lift and he glances at Kal with a question in his eyes.

Kal grins and shrugs. "It was only a little her fault," he agrees. "She's coming with us to Terry's, but she's half-starved and I thought—"

"Well of course she is, I can see that for myself," the other man says, brisk all at once, and comes forward to take Quil gently by the arm and guide her in. "Come in, please, sit down. I'm Iain, and I'm sure Kal's already introduced himself by now. We can make something for you to eat, of course, but it'll take a little time, and if you're as hungry as you look perhaps you don't want to wait that long. There's something else I can do, it won't fill your belly but it'll give you strength."

"Please," Quil says, "I don't need much, Kal already shared what he had with me. It's more than I've had for days," she insists, when Kal and Iain both look unconvinced.

"Right," Iain says, like that's decided the matter, and moves across the room to strings of dried leaves and flowers that are hanging to dry against one wall. He reaches up, plucks off a sprig of what looks like mistletoe, and comes back to her with it closed in his fist. He says a quick series of words in a language unlike anything Quil's ever heard, syllables that feel slippery in her mind, like she won't be able to recall them if she tries to later, and when he sits in the chair beside hers and opens his hand, the leaves that she'd seen him clasp within his fist are gone, and instead sitting on his palm are a handful of berries, red and plump and looking perfectly ripe. They're not any berry she knows, but she reaches all the same, glancing up at Iain with her brows lifted in question. And when he nods encouragement in reply, she takes several of them, and eats the first.

It's sweet and a little tart, a burst of juice across her tongue, and she makes a sharp, pleased sound. "It's good." She lifts the berries that are still sitting on her palm, to squint at them better. "They're magic?"

Iain inclines his head in a nod. "In ordinary circumstances, just one could sustain a person for a full day." He closes his hand with a little laugh when she tries to give him back the rest of the berries she'd taken, and shakes his head. "No, eat them. You've missed enough meals, I'd guess, that you could use the extra." He tucks the rest of them, the ones she'd left with him, into a pocket and then rises to his feet. " _Do_ you want us to cook you something? I wouldn't mind."

The temptation is near-staggering, but Quil fights back her yearning and shakes her head. "Kal said there will be food to eat at Terry's. I don't mind waiting." _I've done enough of that already, haven't I? What's a little more?_ she thinks, but doesn't say it out loud, because the last time she'd mentioned how little there had been to eat while she traveled, they'd both looked stricken.

Iain just nods easy acceptance and moves about the little cottage, gathering up a string of flowers, a walking stick of his own, a bag that clinks and clatters when he slings it over his shoulder, with little narrow tops of earthenware bottles plugged up with cork and wax that Quil can just see sticking up from the mouth of the bag. "There will be," he says with a smile. "Enough for Terry to drown in, if I had to guess. He'll probably be glad to have a few extra mouths to help take it off his hands. Will you carry this while we walk?"

He holds another bag out to her, and Quil takes it and finds it surprisingly light. She glances inside and sees bundles of herbs and more flowers, an earthy, woodsy fragrance rising up from within that smells too much like home. Still, she recognizes the kindness in asking her to take this bag, so light she won't even notice the weight even as worn and bone-weary as she is, particularly in light of how heavy she knows the clay bottles must be. So she only nods and fastens the pack shut before she slings it over her shoulder, and waits while Kal adds a second pack to the one he's already carrying. And then Iain gives the cottage a final once-over, nods his satisfaction, and ushers them all out the door.

Kal leads, still clearing the way before them with the end of his spear, and Iain walks at Quil's side, and somehow no matter how much she lags or how heavy her steps might be, he's there beside her, as easily as though his pace perfectly matches hers entirely by happenstance.

It is perhaps another two hours through the woods, with the silence between them all mostly only broken by the hum of Kal's staff as it sweeps through the underbrush and the quiet, rhythmic clinking of the bottles jostling in Iain's sack. Quil doesn't mind the silence, is used to it after so many days parted from Phi, and it's reassuring just to have company on the journey, even in silence, to have a solid grip catch her elbow and steady her when her ankle twists on uneven ground, or a low voice murmur, "Watch your head here," and help keep either of them from walking into a low-hanging branch.

It's startling, too, to realize the truth of what Iain said about the magical berries she'd eaten, to find that even though her stomach is still cramping on its emptiness, there's a strength and a steadiness to her limbs that she hasn't known in days, and the walking doesn't tire her out as quickly as she's grown used to, despite the roughness of the terrain.

Kal leads them to another little house set in a man-made clearing in the woods, with lights shining from inside and smoke drifting up from the chimney just as there had been from Kal and Iain's home, though there's a good deal more muffled noise coming from inside, as well. Quil hesitates with uncertainty, falling a few paces behind before the other two realize she isn't at their side.

Iain comes back to her and lays a light touch on her shoulder blade. "Are you all right?"

She chokes on a laugh because people keep asking that and the answer keeps being, _No, of course not_. But saying that will raise more questions than she cares to answer right now, and it's not really what he's asking, besides. So she just says, "Yes," her voice tight, and, "I'm sorry."

Iain makes a sharp sound. "Whatever for?" he asks, but doesn't wait for her to respond, just strides up ahead again, joining Kal, and together the both of them start across the flat stones that have been laid like paving stones between the forest's edge and the house, leaving Quil to follow after at her own pace.

She reaches their side just as the door swings open and a man on the other side with a broad smile and tension in the corners of his eyes beams out at them. "I'm glad to see you both, and he will be, too." His smile freezes and falters as his gaze slides past Kal and Iain and lands on Quil, just behind them. "Who's this, then?" he asks of Iain and Kal, and his voice is still light, but his gaze flicks to each of them in turn and Quil _knows_ what that expression means, knows the look of someone trying to mask their first, instinctive reaction to her, her skin and her horns and her tail.

"Kal found trouble," Iain announces brightly, and steps forward to give the man a kiss on the cheek. "So of course he brought it home with him."

"Of course he did," the man says, his voice warming once more with fondness. He gives Quil another glance, considering this time, and gives her a brief nod before he steps back and swings the door wide to admit all three of them. "And you all thought the generous thing to do would be to share the trouble between us?"

"As though you wouldn't pout and sulk if we tried to keep it all for ourselves," says Kal, reaching out to clasp his shoulder briefly as he passes by.

"I never sulk," the man calls after him, but he doesn't wait for a response, just turns his attention back to Quil as she comes in the house last, and makes sure to shut the door behind herself. "Just what sort of trouble should I be bracing myself for, then?"

Kal turns back before Quil can quite decide how to answer her. "Leave her be, Lanra. I've already had a spear to her throat once today, I think she's had her fill of being terrorized."

_That_ makes the man -- Lanra's -- brows climb high, and he looks Quil over again like he's taking the measure of her, but he doesn't protest any further and doesn't stop them all to ask what reason Quil might have given them, to justify such measures.

"Phi sent me," Quil says, to cut short any further protests, and a little bit to have the satisfaction of the coup de grace, and Lanra's reaction is just as dramatic as Kal's had led her to expect; he gasps loudly, and grasps onto Quil's wrist with one hand, his eyes gone wide in his round face.

" _Phi?_ You've seen Phi? How is she? Is she well? Is she safe?"

Quil opens her mouth and shuts it again without making a sound, unsure how to say, _Of course not, she's surrounded by Seath's court, isn't she?_ or _I let her go back there, knowing she'd have to face his wrath when she did,_ or even _She saved my life, but I don't know that the cost was worth it._

"Don't ask questions whose answers you're just going to torture yourself with, Lanra," says someone further inside the house, not Kal and not Iain, but the words draw Quil's attention towards them like a lodestone because there's something familiar about them. She _knows_ that voice, she must, though she can't place her finger on how, or why she'd encounter someone she knows so far out here in the middle of a forest she's never traveled.

She walks forward two steps, moving out of the doorway and into the cottage properly, and comes up short at the sight of a bed before her, a figure propped up in it, with blankets and pillows tucked around him, and his hair is shorter and shaggier than in her memory, but the eyes are just the same, except the last time she'd seen them they had been dark and intent, narrowed over Seath's shoulder in the instant before Quil set the world aflame.

She gropes out blindly, doesn't find a chair to sit in and so just ends up leaning back hard against the wall, Iain's bag sliding off her shoulder to drop and land with a rustle on the floor at her feet. "You--" Her voice catches, breaks into a hundred pieces. "How is it _you?_ "

He stares at her, his eyes wide and solemn, his face wan beneath a livid streak of red across his cheek and a bandage wrapped to cover his brow. "I thought you must have died," he says, very softly, and Quil has to press her hands against her mouth to try to hold in the bubble of wild laughter that rises up in her at that.

_I did_ , Quil doesn't say, and she doesn't say, _I should have_ , either. She doesn't say, _I thought the same about you_. "You're Terry?" she says instead, and the hysteria threatens once more. _"You're_ Terry?"

He inclines his head, acknowledgment, and Quil shifts her hands so that they cover her whole face.

"Well, I don't know about the rest of you," Iain says into the silence between them all, his voice bright with forced levity, "but I'm lost. Do either of you feel like filling the rest of us in? You know each other?"

Quil shakes her head, then drops her hands and forces herself to meet their gazes squarely. "Not really," she says, "but I'm the one who did that to him."

There's a moment of stillness and silence where she can feel the weight of everyone's attention on her, and she braces herself, shoulders tightening in anticipation of cautious friendliness turning to fear or anger. But when the moment breaks, it's with Kal muttering something swift and violent beneath his breath, and then switching to Common to say to Terry, "Gods, and I was worried about _Phi_ killing me for that business with the spear. Now I think I need to be more concerned that you'll rise up from your sickbed and set back all your progress just to smack me over the head."

"That was _you?_ " Iain asks, catching Quil's hand in his. His eyes are wide and it's with a kind of fear, but not the sort she's used to being directed at her. It's the sort that looks like it's fear _for_ her, not of her. "Terry told us about the woman in the courtyard. That was you?"

Quil shakes her head in bewilderment and stares past them all to Terry, pushing himself a little further upright in the bed and looking at her with chagrin. "I can't imagine what he told you," she says, voice pitched towards Iain even though she can't tear her gaze from Terry's flame-touched face. "But I think it must not have been the truth, or you wouldn't still be acting so kind towards me."

"I told them you saved me from my own foolishness," he says, like he's defying her to refute it. And then his voice gentles again, and he says, softer, "I told them you burned yourself up to do it, and I'm glad to be proven a liar in that, at least."

She swallows down anything she might say in response to that, because she can't fathom him lying there with the touch of her magic burned across his skin, and being glad to see her standing before him. He _does_ seem glad to see her, though, impossibly, and so she steps away from the wall she's been leaning against, leaves the bag she dropped there and comes forward to sit on the edge of a chair that's been pulled up by the side of the bed. It must belong to Lanra, but he doesn't protest when she claims it.

She reaches out to Terry's hand, where it's lying on the blankets draped over him. There's a streak of red here, too, and a string of small blisters. She touches her fingers gently just beside the burn, says quietly, "I don't know how you can claim this was _saving_ you. I thought I'd killed you, and to look at you, it seems I nearly did."

"Attacking the king in the middle of his palace? With only a knife from my belt? We'd _had_ a plan that night, but that wasn't it. And it was foolishness." His gaze slides to her, catches hers and holds it, and she wants to cry. Not even her mother ever looked at her so gently after nearly being consumed by her fire. "Even if it was for the right reasons."

He means Seath's hand around her neck, throwing her back against the stones. He means the outrage on his face as he'd stalked toward them, ready to throw his plan and his life out the window for Quil's sake. She shakes her head desperately and pushes down the magic surging up inside her, rising to answer the riotous tumble of her emotions. "Did you tell them how I was the one that ruined your plan to start with?" she demands, thrown out like a challenge. "The guards wouldn't have come if it weren't for me."

There's movement beyond the edges of her vision, one of them shifting, and Lanra says, gentle, "He told us that you'd begged him to let go of you first, and he didn't. He told us that you fell all over yourself apologizing afterwards, and asking _him_ if _he_ was okay, when he was the one who'd accosted you."

Quil presses the heels of her hands to her eyes again, shaking her head desperately. They aren't saying anything untrue, but the picture they're painting with those truths is entirely wrong. 

"You did tell me to run," Terry says, his voice wry with humor, and Quil chokes a broken laugh against her palms. She doesn't understand how he can lie there in his sickbed beside the woman who put him there and _joke._ "I should have run faster."

She breathes deeply against her hands for a moment, fighting to keep the bubble of hysterical laughter down, fighting to keep her magic where it belongs. And she can't do this, she can't argue with these people, who seem so determined to think she did something laudable, when they're all standing at the bedside of a man who's bandaged and burned because of her. So she drops her hands and squares her shoulders, says, "You were there for Seath?" and hopes that they'll allow her to change the topic entirely.

Terry rests his gaze on her a moment, and she thinks she can see in it that he recognizes what she's trying to do. She tenses, ready to bolt for the door if he presses the point and threatens her tenuous grip on her magic, but he says only, "Yes." His gaze flicks away towards the others when they stir at his admission. "You didn't see her with him," he tells them. "He's no friend to her." He looks back to Quil again, adds softly, "Nor to us."

Quil nods once and twists her fingers together before pinning them between her knees. "That explains why Phi told me to find you, then."

And he knew, of course, that she had seen Phi, he had heard Lanra ask Quil about her. But even so, there's a light that kindles on his face when Quil speaks her name, and he shifts on the bed, grimacing, until he's straightened up enough to reach out and catch hold of Quil's hand.

Quil tenses at the touch. Her magic jolts against her grip a little at it, but it's not spooling away from her like it had in the courtyard. Still, she doesn't relax, because he's got that same eager, hungry look in his eye that the others did and she can't tell them what they want to hear, she can't tell them that Phi's safe when she knows that she isn't.

"Tell me what you can," he says, and Quil finds that she can breathe, all at once.

She nods and focuses on the pressure of his skin against hers, lets it ground her despite how her magic rises at the touch. "She said-- First, she said to tell you that she showed me a bracelet that she wore." Quil lifts her free hand and touches the back of Terry's, where it's covering her wrist. He startles a little at the admission, his hand tightening briefly on her, just a pulse of his fingers pressing to her skin. "She wore it under her vambrace. It was gold, with flowers and ivy carvings. It was pretty." She takes a deep, deep breath. "She said to tell you that, if you doubted me. She said you would know what it meant."

Terry's voice is choked, just a little, when he speaks. "I don't doubt you, Quil. But yes. I know what it means."

" _I_ don't," she complains, but just as quickly shakes her head. "It doesn't matter. She said to tell you everything, but... There's so _much_ of it."

Nearby, Iain shifts and clears his throat. "Perhaps we should—" he says, and his bottles rattle.

Terry glances to him and shakes his head. "It'll make me tired, and I need to be able to pay attention to this. I'll drink anything you like afterwards."

Iain relents, though not without a grumble. While he moves across the cottage to set his bag down on top of a trunk and sit leaning back against it himself, Kal remains standing where he is, leaning one shoulder against the wall, and there's a curve to his mouth that lightens his expression so he doesn't seem entirely grim, but still his voice is firm when he says, "Food, then, if not Iain's potions. I don't know how much Lanra has managed to stuff down your throat, but she's half-starved, and we promised her plenty to eat once we got her here."

"I can wait—" Quil protests.

"No. You're right." Terry releases Quil's wrist and sits back against the pillows propped up behind him. Quil draws her hand back and rubs the skin on her wrist where he'd held it, though he didn't hurt her. Her skin feels warm there, and she can feel her magic humming beneath the surface like her pulse. "We should all eat. There's stew on the fire—it should be just about ready, don't you think, Lanra?"

"Just about," Lanra agrees easily, and moves between the rest of them to the hearth, and a large metal pot that's sitting on the glowing coals. "Iain, get the bowls down, would you?"

And just like that, everyone's set into motion, moving around the small room in a comfortable pattern that Quil sits in the middle of like a boulder in a river, out of place, creating turbulence in her wake. 

She pulls in on herself, trying to keep small and out of the way, and in a few moments there are five sturdy clay bowls served up with stew that steams and smells deliciously fragrant, and one of them is placed into Quil's hands by Kal, who pats her shoulder once she's taken it, and one is given to Terry, and others drag bits of furniture around until they're all seated near enough to the bed with their bowls balanced on their knees or in one hand, and Quil bends her head over her bowl and looks down into it and doesn't have the slightest idea how to approach untangling the mess of everything that needs to be said.

"Why don't you start," Terry says, like he can see what she's struggling with, that she's drowning beneath the weight of everything that feels so much greater than her, "with what happened in the courtyard. Seath wanted something from you, I think? What was it?"

Quil shuts her eyes and presses her hands against the warm sides of her bowl. There were a dozen easier things she might have started with, but it's a sensible place to begin, and of course Terry would be curious about what he'd overheard between them. She presses her fingertips to the prickling heat of the clay, almost hot enough to hurt, but that's at least familiar enough to be steadying, too. "I have magic in me," she says, a soft admission, and even that much makes her heart flutter. It's more than she's willingly admitted to anyone but those she loves and trusts the best.

It's not usually something she needs to admit to. Usually her magic makes itself obvious, whether she'd like it to or not.

"You're a mage?" Iain asks, a gentle interjection.

Quil lets out a huff of mirthless laughter and shakes her head. "It's not-- It's not something I studied, or learned. It's-- It's a long story, and it has little to do with what you asked, but what's important is that I _have_ magic, but I can't... control it." The fingers of one hand curl against her bowl, making a fist. Her pulse races, and her mouth is dry with fear. "Not a lot. Not always. And Seath... He has diviners, and they told him what happened to me, and that I had this great power in me--" Her words go twisted and jagged because it's not ever a word she would have used for her magic, and they would have hesitated to name it so if they'd had to wrestle with it every day the way that she did "--and Seath, well." She flips a hand out, a gesture meant to say, _Seath is Seath._ It's refreshing, almost, to be amongst a group who hear the bitterness of her words and see the sharpness of her gesture and understand the meaning behind it, to be with people who answer her silent judgment with grim understanding and silent nods of their own. _Seath is Seath, of course he saw power in you and wanted it for himself._

"He took me--" She falters there, because all this time she's had to say _took me in_ , had to play the grateful orphan, glad for her king's protection, but she risks a glance up at the faces around her, sees them set in hard, somber lines where they had only been open around her before, and she dares to tell the truth, to say, "He took me away. He named me his ward to keep me close, and made it clear what he wanted from me. I don't know what he wanted it _for_ , but course it would be something terrible. I put him off for as long as I could, let him think that I didn't know what magic I carried within me, but ... he found out." She opens the hand that she'd wrapped into a fist, and scrubs her palm against her skirt where it stretches across her knee.

"Because of me," Terry says, soft and full of sorrow.

Quil shakes her head hard. "No, you didn't-- Because of _me_. I can't control it." And her voice breaks. "I should be able to. I should be stronger, but I'm not."

"You asked me to let you go," Terry says, his voice still soft, his words still gentle. "I thought you were afraid I'd harm you. When you knocked me back from you, I thought, _Well, Terry, that's what you get for not unhanding a lady when she's asked you to."_ He blows on a spoonful of his soup and eats it, before glancing up and meeting Quil's gaze again. "You told me I didn't understand, and you were right. You didn't mean to do that magic?"

She shuts her eyes and shakes her head hard. "I'd been losing control of it for days. It was going to happen anyway. It happened then because I was upset-- Not because of you," she rushes to add, when he flinches and drops his gaze away from her. "I was upset because of _him_. It's why I was out in the courtyard. I knew my control was slipping and I knew he was going to come to me and ask it of me again and I... couldn't. I couldn't face it again. I couldn't keep it inside me for another night, not with him shoving that damned crystal in my hand again—"

And all at once, the small, crowded cottage is perfectly, entirely silent, the only sound at all the gentle crackle of the fire in the hearth and the broken, ragged breaths tearing through Quil's chest.

A quiet, creeping sort of dread begins to take her, wrapping around her stomach like a fist so that she couldn't eat the stew in front of her if she'd tried. She swallows against it futilely, makes herself breathe and makes herself open her eyes and look at the men who are sitting around her, every one of them staring at her.

"What?" she asks, her voice small. "What did I say?"

The three men exchange glances with one another. It's Iain, in the end, who clears his throat and speaks, who asks, "Crystal?"

Quil blinks at him, then looks at Terry, frowning. "You saw it, that night. I was holding it."

The corner of Terry's mouth quirks up, wry but nothing at all like amused. "I saw a corrupt king who had ordered his guards to turn their backs while he abused a desperate, terrified woman. I saw panic on your face, and I wasn't paying terribly much attention to anything else. If there was a crystal, it escaped my notice." He's eaten most of his stew while Quil spoke. He sets the bowl aside now, on a low table beside the bed, and twists where he's sitting to give Quil his direct attention. "Will you tell us about this crystal?"

She holds up one hand, fingers curved to indicate the size of it while the other hand balances her bowl on her knee. "It's blue, and it's magic, I think— Or." She narrows her eyes and bites at her lip. "Or it's the opposite. It's...empty. It looks solid, and feels solid, but when I touch it my magic wants to fill it, like water flowing into a bowl. He wants — _wanted_ — me to fill it. I hadn't, not until that night, but I couldn't hold it back any longer. And then you were coming and I knew if he knew you were there he was going to kill you and I thought—" She laughs, bitter, because oh, it was such a foolish thing to hope. "My magic likes fire. I wish I could say why. Sometimes I can shape it into something else, even when I'm losing control of it. But I thought, if it _was_ fire, and if you ran like I'd told you to, maybe you would be all right, and maybe Seath would burn."

Lanra, sitting on the trunk and with an ankle crossed over his knee to make a level place to rest his bowl, makes a choked sound from her left. "You thought to _immolate_ him—"

Her cheeks feel on fire now. "It was foolish, I know."

"It was brave," Kal says, voice firm to correct her.

"You were standing right before him," says Terry, thoughtful. "You thought he'd perish, but you'd somehow survive?" There's an edge to his voice that makes Quil glances at him, makes her think he already knows her answer.

Still, she speaks it all the same, says quietly, "No. Of course I didn't."

The silence that answers that admission stretches out, as fragile as one of her mother's threads drawn from her spindle. Terry looks at her like somehow that pains him worse than his burns do, and Iain, after a moment, swears softly beneath his breath and then says, firm, "We need to get Allan here to talk to you."

"He mentioned he'd try to pay a visit tomorrow," Lanra says, shifting on the trunk and setting his bowl down on the floor by his feet, then stretches and twists to look out the cottage's little window. "There's enough light left I could make it to him tonight, if you think I should impress upon him that he ought to do more than try."

"There is not," Iain says quellingly, frowning at him.

Lanra just grins back at him, broad and easy. "Maybe not for _human_ eyes," he says with a low chuckle, and gets to his feet. Kal reaches out, waiting to take his bowl from him before Lanra even bends to pick it up, like they've all gone through these motions a thousand times before, and all at once Quil abruptly feels that same aching hollowness in the pit of her that she had when they'd been serving up the stew, the painful awareness of how well and easily these men work in concert together, and what a disruption she is to have thrown herself into the middle of them. 

None of the rest of them seem to acknowledge the ripples she's made by landing in their midst. Lanra just picks up a pack that's been leaning against the foot of Terry's bed, shoulders it and throws on a cloak that's broad enough to cover them both, then turns back long enough to dip his head in a nod towards Quil. "It was good to meet you, Quil. I imagine I'll see you again tomorrow, and I'll look forward to hearing all about our wayward sister."

_That_ leaves Quil blinking at him, startled and reassessing the reactions everyone had given her at the mentions of Phi's name, in light of this new information. By the time she's pulled herself free from her thoughts, Lanra has taken his leave of the rest of them and left, the crunching of his footsteps scarcely audible over the crackle of the dying fire.

"Thank you, Quil," Terry says from the bed, drawing her attention back around to him. "We'll have much more to hear from you tomorrow, I suspect. But Kal promised you a meal, and you've scarcely had two bites of it. And I promised Iain I'd drink his potions." He gives Iain a glancing smile before looking back to Quil. "Please don't let us keep you from your supper any longer."

She looks down at her bowl, still full nearly to the brim and only gently steaming now. "I've barely even begun to tell you what I need to," she says softly, even as her stomach growls a belated protest. "Phi said to tell you everything."

This time, she doesn't miss the way Phi's name brightens everyone's faces. "That's as may be," Iain says, rising and taking up his pack full of bottles. "But Terry needs to rest, and you need to eat. Anything else can wait at least until morning." He sits with the bottles on the side of Terry's bed, takes one out and scrapes the wax from it with a thumbnail before prying out the cork and handing it over to Terry, who drinks it down directly.

Quil sighs a little, and eats, and once she's started it's as though she can't stop, all the hunger that she's pushed down and ignored for days rising up to overtake her, and it's moments before her bowl's empty and she sets it aside, wishing a little wistfully for another one, or maybe another five.

Kal comes over to her while Iain opens a third bottle and hands it to Terry. He reaches a hand down, catches her eye and jerks his head towards her empty bowl. "May I?"

She flushes guiltily. "Oh, you don't have to. I can clean up after myself--"

He just smiles, scales shifting and almost-black in the glow of the dying fire, and bends enough to pick up the bowl she wouldn't hand him. She flushes hotter but can't quite figure out how to apologize properly. And then he carries her bowl over to the hearth, instead of to where he'd set Lanra's abandoned bowl, and all her half-formed apologies dry up beneath the crushing weight of her gratitude when he fills her bowl right up to the brim again, and carries it back to her. 

He sits next to her once he's handed it to her, on the floor because there aren't any other seats available that wouldn't have to be dragged across the room, and even though it puts him lower than her she still feels dwarfed by him, and by all the kindness that's been shown to her by these people who are perfect strangers. "Thank you," she says softly, darting a glance to him, and feels the inadequacy of the words to convey her feelings in their entirety.

Kal just smiles at her, easy, and rocks his shoulder against her knee. "I promised I'd feed you," he says, like that's that. And then, just as easy, "There's more where that came from, if you're still hungry once you've finished it."

She laughs a little, disbelieving and overwhelmed, and can't figure out what to say to that, so she doesn't, just ducks her head and eats while it's still hot from the fire.

Iain is still feeding bottles to Terry, who obediently drinks each one that's handed to him, and it's hard to tell with the dying light of the fire and the growing darkness outside, but Quil thinks he looks better. The burn across his face looks less livid, fading from the red of a fresh wound to the brown of a scar, and the blisters on the back of his hand shrivel and dry and scab across the old scars that are already there, until he looks like he was hurt weeks ago, rather than days, and his eyes droop and his head lists forward before he catches himself and jerks it upright. He rubs a knuckle against his eyes and murmurs something to Iain that Quil thinks is an apology, and reaches a hand out expectantly.

Iain just smiles and sets down the bottle he had been nearly finished opening. "That's enough for now, I think." He helps Terry rearrange the pillows at his back, so that he can lie down properly, and then pats his shoulder and says something to him that's too quiet for Quil to hear, and Terry nods and shuts his eyes.

Iain comes over to where Quil and Kal are sitting, and he reaches a hand down to press to Kal's neck fondly, once he's close enough to, and then sets the half-opened potion bottle beside Quil. "Finish eating first, because it's going to knock you out in short order," he says, settling down on the floor beside Kal, their legs half-tangled together, "but once you've had your fill, I want you to drink that."

Quil sets her bowl down abruptly and looks at him, stricken. "Terry needs that, not me."

"Terry's had half a dozen, and there's more left for him for tomorrow, if he needs them. And I can always brew up some more, if it comes to it. This one's yours."

"They're _scratches_. I'm fine."

"They're scratches," he agrees, inclining his head. "And there are a number of them, and if you've had as little to eat as you said, then your body could use the assistance. Drink it, Quil, so I don't have to worry about _both_ of you."

Her mouth tightens, and she wants to protest. But Kal shifts away from Iain enough to nudge her with his shoulder once more, and says easily, "Best do as he says. There's no arguing with him, not about these sorts of things." 

And she's tired and she hurts, even aside from her scratches she hurts. And so she wraps her fingers around the cool earthenware bottle and peels away a small curl of wax that Iain had already pried up. "Will you let me help you brew more, later?"

Iain's smile is slow and warm, and he curls an arm through Kal's and leans in against his side. "I'm always glad to have help. And if you want me to teach you, I'll be glad to show you."

She _has_ had enough to eat, now that her second bowl of stew has been emptied, even though instinct urges her to gorge herself until there's nothing left just in case this all really does turn out to be too good to be true. But she knows she won't thank herself for it later, and neither will her stomach, so she sets aside that instinct and finishes peeling the wax off the bottle, uncorks it and upends the contents into her mouth.

The potion tastes like herbs and earth and good, growing things. It tastes the way the forest smells, when the sun's warmed all the trees and there's just enough of a breeze to stir the scent of it all up. It doesn't taste _good,_ particularly, but it reminds her of some of the tisanes her mother brewed up whenever she or Cordelia had caught a sniffle. It tastes like healing, and she has enough experience from a childhood full of her mother's teas to know how to gulp it all down in a single swallow, before the taste of it grows overwhelming.

Iain looks satisfied when she sets down the empty bottle, and braces a hand against Kal's shoulder to help him push himself to his feet. "That's going to make you drowsy soon enough. Healing always does. Let's get you set up to sleep before it does." Kal stands as well and starts moving aside the furniture that had gotten dragged around for people to sit and eat at, clearing some space on the floor while Iain gets some pillows from the bed, ones that aren't being used now that Terry doesn't need them to help prop him upright. "There's only the one bed, I'm afraid, but Terry has blankets enough to share between the three of us."

"Please, that's not necessary." Quil sets her bowl over with Lanra's and turns back to the two of them. "I've been sleeping in the stream, and on the forest floor. Just having walls and a door to keep the wind shut out seems a luxury by comparison. I don't need more than a space to curl up on."

Iain stares at her, unblinking and with a pillow gripped in his hand, for a long moment. "Well, tonight you're going to have blankets," he says decisively, and punches up the pillow before he lays it out on the floor with a quilt unfolded from the foot of Terry's bed.

Quil represses a sigh and doesn't protest further, but comes over to help him with the blankets, and then with the ones he grabs for himself and Kal as well, because she can do at least that much. And by the time they're done with that, her skin is starting to itch, and she stops in the middle of the room, hooves carefully placed between the mosaic of blankets that's become the floor, and frowns at her arm as she watches one of the scratches there, long and a little jagged and deep enough that it had drawn blood at the time, begin to heal, the edges knitting together and the swelling flattening out, until finally the scab covering it all flakes off and she's left with new, tender skin where the cut had been, a little puffy and a paler, pinker shade against the red of her skin. It itches ferociously, every bit of broken skin that she still has does, as the potion's healing magic does its work, and she has to curl her fingers in against her palms to fight the urge to scratch at it all.

And Iain wasn't wrong about it making her want to sleep, either. She feels drowsy and a little dizzy, even standing still, and when she wrests her attention from the wounds that she's watching stitch themselves together, it's abruptly difficult to keep her eyes open, and she blinks around herself, groggy and a little disoriented.

"There, now," Iain says, like he's satisfied, and lays a hand on her shoulder to push her gently towards the quilt and pillow laid out for her. "That's gotten a good start. You go ahead and sleep, and let that potion do its work while you rest, and we'll see how things look in the morning and decide whether you need a second one or not."

"If you give me one of these in the morning," Quil says, her words heavy and dragging, her tongue feeling thick and clumsy in her mouth, "I'm going to sleep the whole day away."

Iain makes a little sound, like a huff, and increases the pressure on her shoulder just a bit. "Yes, well, I doubt a little extra sleep would be the worst thing in the world for you right now. But we'll discuss it in the morning. Sleep now, Quil, and if there's anything you need in the middle of the night, don't hesitate to wake one of us. Well, wake me or Kal."

She nods, too exhausted to formulate a protest, and scrubs a hand over her face before she picks her way to the place they've laid out for her, and slides under the quilt and lays her head on the pillow.

She remembers sighing a little, making a soft, helpless sound as the pillow cushions her, as soft as a cloud after what she's had to make do with while traveling, and she remembers thinking she ought to thank them one last time, but she can't remember if she ever manages to get the words out before sleep overtakes her.

*

In the morning, the cottage is still and quiet when she wakes, the room dimly lit by the early light of dawn, and Quil rises carefully, wary of waking any of the others prematurely, and wraps the quilt around her shoulders and picks her way across Kal and Iain. Kal stirs a little in his sleep, rolling from his back onto his side, but doesn't rouse.

The door scarcely creaks when she eases it open, and she shuts it carefully behind her before tightening the quilt around her shoulders and hitching it up so it won't drag on the ground, and making her way into the woods, away from the cottage.

She doesn't go far, deep enough into the trees that she can still see slivers of the house, if she looks for it, but only that. And then she finds a mostly-bare bit of ground, sweeps the damp leaves and litter away, and settles down cross-legged.

She shuts her eyes and reaches for her magic, and feels it jump to her touch, overeager. It makes her frown, makes her tighten her grip on it as she gathers it up and throws it towards the west, away from the rising sun, lets it spool out long and far the way it yearns to.

This time, she doesn't have to imagine it finding Phi and hope for her magic to make her imaginings manifest. She feels the catch, feels a connection forge, like a tug on a line, and the quality of the silence around her has changed, like sitting in silence beside someone, but they've just drawn a breath before speaking.

_I'm sorry,_ she says, straightaway, and hopes Phi's awake to hear it. _I'm fine, I'm sorry. I met Kal, and he frightened me. We frightened each other. I must have worried you. I'm sorry._

There's stillness and quiet, just the occasional chirp and song of birds through the forest as they wake, and the sense of someone breathing carefully, the way Quil does when she's fighting to control her temper. _You did,_ Phi says in her mind, and she _sounds_ like she's struggling for calm, but even knowing how she must have upset her can't stop Quil from covering her face with her hands and giving a short, choked sob of relief. _I'm glad you're all right. Tell Kal I'm going to strangle him for scaring us both like that, whatever it was he did. Have you--_

Quil lets out her breath all at once when the connection breaks and her magic pulls back to her. It twists and writhes like a snake, and when the last of it returns to her she feels it like a physical blow right to the middle of her that makes the bottom drop out of her stomach.

When she opens her eyes, she gives a sharp cry before she can stop herself, because it's not her stomach that's fallen it's the forest floor, the ground dropped out from beneath her as she floats up off the forest floor and toward the canopy, and she scrambles and twists but only manages to get her fingertips on a root arching up out of the ground beside where she'd sat, and she holds on for the space of one frantic heartbeat before her grip slips and she loses it, and rises up up up once more.

There aren't any branches near her that she can grab onto, nothing above her to stop her ascent until far above in the treetops, and her stomach lurches at the thought of ending up there. In the end, it's the quilt that saves her, one corner of it swinging wide as she flails for something to hold onto or kick off of, and it catches in the fork of a branch and sticks there, and Quil grabs onto the quilt with both hands before she can float away from it, and holds on with all the meager strength in her, and wonders how on earth she's going to get herself back down.

Eventually, she's able to pull herself along the quilt as though climbing a rope, until she's close enough that she can reach out and grasp the branch itself. The muscles in her arms ache and her fingers are cramping, but she manages to pull herself in and get a leg around the branch, and then the other, and she wraps all four limbs around it and hangs on, gasping for breath. 

She doesn't know how high her magic will send her floating, if she lets it, or how long she'll have before it's worn itself out and sends her crashing back to the forest floor. She knows that her grip isn't going to hold out forever. She cranes her head about, trying to catch a glimpse of the cottage through the trees, but what good would that even do her? It's so early, and she took such care to make sure she didn't wake anyone up on her way out.

The quilt, of course, falls to the ground as soon as she lets go of it. She clings to the branch and frowns down at it, half-crumpled on the forest floor near the base of the tree, and thinks, _Traitor._

She could shout for help, if she had the air for it, but her breathing's short and sharp as her pulse races, and she can't manage anything loud enough even to startle the birds near her, much less to have any hope of waking those sleeping inside the cottage. 

It has to end eventually, there's limits to her magic, there always have been. Maybe, with panic and desperation as fuel, her strength can outlast her magic, and she won't fly off to get tangled in the treetops.

It comes sooner than she'd dared to hope for, less than a quarter hour by her reckoning before she abruptly realizes that the strain in her arms is lessening, and then, that she can feel the bite of the tree bark pressing into her cheek, her chest, her stomach, gradually increasing as her weight settles onto it, instead of pulling upward against it.

She clings to the branch, gasping and grateful, and only realizes too late that she shouldn't have, if her magic was going to set her down gently, like a molted feather drifting down to the ground. Now all her weight is on the branch, and she glances past it to the ground below and knows that if she lets herself slide off of it now, there's going to be nothing gentle about her descent.

She tries to call for someone again, and manages a little better, a little louder, but not enough to rouse anyone, near as she can tell.

It's not too much later than that, though -- not long enough for her alarm to settle into true panic, in any case -- before she hears footsteps crunching across the ground, and she leans out precariously, just enough to try to see who's coming, and judge whether they're close enough for a shout to reach them.

It takes her a moment to recognize the dark hair beneath her, the compact build. She knows him, though, when he calls, "Quil?" and scans the forest around him for her, only to freeze at the sight of the quilt on the ground, and then dash over to it in a few quick strides. He picks it up and looks at it, hisses air through his teeth and calls her name again, louder, and now he doesn't sound like he's searching, he sounds as though he's alarmed.

"Terry?" she calls down to him, lifting up onto an elbow to see better. He pulls himself up short, his head whipping around, and when she calls, "Terry!" again, finally, he tips his head back and looks up, and sees her.

" _Quil?_ By all that's holy, what are you doing up there?"

Very carefully, she pushes herself upright, until she's sitting on the branch instead of clinging to it. Terry backs up a few steps, so he can see her better without having to crane his neck back so far. "It's a long story," she says, dry, and drums a heel against the branch. "I would love to not be. I can't quite seem to get down, though."

He pulls one hand through his hair, then fists it at his nape, head tipped back and gaping at her. "Can't you come down the way you went up?"

"I really can't."

He looks around, as though some convenient solution might manifest itself from between the trees, then looks back up at her, one hand lifted to shade his eyes from the brightening light of the sun. "Can you climb down?"

Quil looks down at her hands, closes them into fists and opens them again, and feels the way they're still aching from the strain of getting to the branch and staying on it. "I don't think so," she calls to him softly. 

"How long have you been up there?"

She lifts one shoulder in a shrug. "Less than an hour?"

"Oh for the love of--" He starts away, manages a stride and a half before he turns and comes back and stands directly beneath her. "You're not so high up. Jump down, and I'll catch you."

_"What?_ " She strains forward to gape down at him, and nearly overbalances before she jerks herself back and grabs onto the branch below her with both hands. "You'll do no such thing!"

"Trust me, Quil."

"Iain will kill me. He just got you back on your feet."

"You're not so high up," he says again, and she barks a short, disbelieving laugh, "and you're a slip of a thing. Hang down, as much as you can, and I'll catch you."

She shakes her head wildly. "Surely Kal, or-- Lanra, maybe--"

"Lanra won't be here for hours yet." Terry's voice gentles, not shouting anymore, trusting his words to reach her, even so far away. "And Kal sleeps like the dead, when he has the luxury of it. I could get him, but I'd have to leave you here to wake him, and I'm not doing that." He holds his arms out and Quil gives a shock of laughter, desperate and disbelieving. "Jump, Quil. I've got you."

It's so, so stupid. Iain's going to kill her. _Phi's_ going to kill her. But she meant what she told him, and she believes he means it too, that he won't leave her alone in her predicament, as ridiculous as it is.

She huffs out a sharp breath and very carefully rolls over, so she's leaning across the branch on her stomach instead of sitting on top of it. Her fingers scrabble at the bark and her legs are dangling, hooves kicking out despite herself and she's going to have to be careful of them, they could do damage if he catches one of them as she falls.

There isn't a part of her that _isn't_ at risk of hurting him, if this goes poorly.

"If you get hurt," she says, " _you're_ explaining it to Iain." And then she lowers herself off the branch as much as she can, as much of her weight as her cramping hands will support, and she lets go.

There's a moment of weightlessness, the same stomach-lurching sensation from before, and then an impact that knocks the air from her lungs but it doesn't hurt, not the way that landing on the forest floor would have. She opens her eyes and Terry's startlingly close, offering her a crooked smile. "Are you all right?" he asks her, and his eyes roam over her face like he's searching for any sign of pain.

"Yes. I'm fine." She's still breathless from the fall, from the landing, and her voice comes out thin and high. She shifts in his arms until he sets her on her feet, and she takes a step back and shakes her skirts out to hide the way her hands are trembling from nerves. "Thank you. Are _you?_ "

His smile widens, brightens. "I'm fine." He holds his hands up as though to let her see for herself. "You don't have worry about me."

She frowns at that, skeptical. But instead of answering, of arguing the point, she bends and picks up the quilt from where it fell, and makes a low sound when she sees a jagged line of torn fabric across one of the patchwork pieces, the wool wadding inside showing through the gap. "Oh, I've ripped it," she says softly, and shows it to Terry. "It got caught on a branch when I was floating away. I might've ended up a hundred feet up before I managed to grab on to something, otherwise. I'm sorry."

Terry takes the quilt from her to look at the tear and hums a thoughtful noise. "Well, it's worth the sacrifice then, I'd say. I think Iain _would_ have words with me, if I'd tried to catch you from there." He runs his thumb over the line of the tear, where the edges of the fabric are ragged and a little frayed. "It's not very big. Allan can mend it, once he gets here."

That only makes her feel worse, makes the guilt twist sharper within her. "Please, you've all been so kind to me already, that's really not necessary.  I'm good with a needle and thread, I can mend it myself, it's my fault--"

Terry smiles at her and moves to wrap the quilt around her shoulders again, cutting her off. "I don't doubt that. But we'll have Allan look at it." He holds the corners of the quilt close around her, until she lifts her hands and clasps the blanket's edges herself. "It's not the first time this quilt has been ripped, and it won't be the last. It's made to be used, after all, and sometimes that means it's going to show its wear. Please don't fret over it." 

She shakes her head, but can't find the voice to say, _No, but look at all the time that's gone into it, all the effort and care, and I damaged it because I wasn't paying attention, because my magic ruins everything even when it's not setting things on fire._ Her throat is too thick for her to say it, and the words catch in her throat until she's sure she's going to choke on them anyway. She ducks her head and manages a croaked, "Thank you," instead, frees a hand from inside the folds of the quilt and waves it at the branch overhead that she'd been caught on. "For--"

"--risking life and limb and Iain's wrath?" Terry's grin is broad and warm with humor, the corners of his eyes creased with it, inviting her to share in the joke. A startled laugh bursts out of her despite herself, and she ducks her head again. "Well, you're welcome. I'm glad I found you. I'm glad I went looking for you in the first place."

That makes her lift her head a little, frowning. His words are light, still full of warmth and good-natured humor, but there's a slight strain to them that makes her wonder. "Did you think I'd run off while everyone was sleeping?"

He snaps his mouth shut abruptly, looking caught-out.

Quil huffs out a breath and turns until she finds a rock with a mostly-flat top that she can back up to and sit on, pulling her knees in against her chest and wrapping the quilt around all of her. She folds her arms on her knees, and props her chin on her arms. "I fought so hard to get here," she says softly. "Why would I run away?"

Terry's smile edges toward chagrined. "Well, I imagine being greeted by a spear to the throat might do it."

She makes a face. It's meant to be dismissive, but it just makes Terry laugh beneath his breath. "We worked that out. I should have been more cautious. If I'd known you were working against the king, and had good reason to be wary of strangers, I'd have been more circumspect in throwing around your name. I don't blame him. There wasn't time for Phi to warn me, I suppose, and I didn't think."

Terry makes a sound that she thinks is meant to be encouraging and kicks a space on the ground, then sinks down and sits with her, angled a little so that he's neither immediately beside her nor directly across from her. He grimaces a little as he settles himself down and Quil watches him and wonders if he has burns that haven't yet healed, or if it's lingering soreness from the healing process, or something else entirely. Once he's settled, though, he sits easily with his legs crossed, leaning forward a little with his elbows on his thighs, and waits to speak until Quil's met his gaze. "Will you tell me about how you came to know Phi, and why she sent you to us?"

She frowns a little, her mouth twisting. "Shouldn't we go back inside, if I'm going to do that? Won't Kal and Iain want to hear it, too?"

"They'll be curious. We can go back if you'd rather, of course." He tips his head to the side, watching her, and scratches a hand through his hair. "Or we can stay out here, and you can tell me, if that would be easier. Whichever you'd prefer."

Quil hesitates, chewing on the edge of her lip. They ought to go back, she knows that. It would be silly to tell Terry only for him to have to repeat the tale to the others, or for her to have to tell it again when they're all together. But the morning is cool and lovely, and the cottage will be crowded, even with Lanra gone to retrieve Allan, and she doesn't know if she can get through this part of it if they all clamor and talk over one another and stare at her like she's said something terrible without realizing it every time she opens her mouth. And Terry seems quieter, more likely to listen and let her finish before offering comment. The thought of telling this with just him to listen, instead of the group of them, makes the weight of foreboding lift off her chest a little. And Phi did say to tell _Terry_ everything. She never mentioned the rest of her brothers, or that Quil should tell them, too. She said to tell Terry.

Besides, her magic is unsettled still, despite having just slipped her grasp, and wouldn't it be better to have a conversation like this out here, where she's not going to burn the whole cottage down if her emotions get the better of her? 

Terry's gaze has been on her while she wrestled with herself, not expectant, just waiting. "Iain should be up by now," he says quietly, laid between them like an offering, and she startles a little and looks to him. "He'll have made coffee. I could go get some for us, and we can drink while you tell me about it. Do you want me to do that?"

She shuts her eyes and shakes her head, guilt settling like a weight within her. "You don't have to do that. I can-- It's fine, we can go back, I can tell everyone at once. It's fine."

"Quil," he says, careful chastisement, and lays a hand on her knee. She startles again, and her eyes fly open to look at him. He looks very solemn and very intent, and his gaze searches hers like he's looking for something there, but whatever he finds, it doesn't make him happy. "Do you _want_ me to?"

She swallows, speechless, because she can't bring herself to say, _yes, please, that would be lovely,_ and she can't make herself lie to him, either.

Terry holds her gaze for just a moment longer, then nods like she's answered him all the same, and pulls his hand from her knee so he can push himself back up onto his feet. "I'll be right back, then," he says, and leaves her blinking after him as he makes his way back to the cottage.

She leans her chin on her knees and wraps her arms around her calves, holding the quilt closed around her so that she's in a warm little bubble, just her face and her fingers prickling in the cool morning air. And she should get up and go after Terry, she knows she should. She should follow him back into the cottage and take her coffee there, and wave off all his concern about her, but the cool of the air and the warmth of the blanket are so nice, and it's refreshing to be able to enjoy the forest around her instead of feeling the vastness of it all crushing down on her. And there will be people back in the house, people who have been nothing but kind and generous towards her but who are loud and boisterous all the same, and by the time she's managed to convince herself to get up and move, she can hear Terry's steps through the leaves coming back to her, and it's a moot point.

She tries not to be relieved when she settles back onto the rock that she's made her seat, but she mostly fails at it. A moment later Terry appears through the trees, holding a sturdy clay mug in each hand, and he passes the larger off to her and ignores her when she tries to reach for the other one instead, and sits back in the place that he'd cleared for himself, cross-legged again and with the cup cradled between both of his hands. 

"Now, then. That's a better way to start the morning, don't you think?" He breathes in the steam rising from his mug, takes a sip and sighs contentedly. "No one makes coffee the way Iain can. But, you were going to tell me how you met Phi, yes?"

Quil nods slowly and sips from her own mug to give her a chance to think, and decide how she's going to tell the tale. He's not wrong about the coffee -- it's dark and rich and piping hot, and a far cry from what was available to them in Seath's palace. "The one tale leads to the other," she says slowly. "Seath knew I had magic, and knew I'd been lying to him about it. And after I set fire to all three of us and the courtyard besides, there was no hiding how I really felt about him, and about helping him." She shrugs one shoulder and stares up at the sky brightening above her, golden light filtering through emerald leaves, because she knows if she looks at Terry she's going to see the same horror and outrage that she saw on all their faces the night before and she can't have that, not right now. Not yet. Not when there's still so much left to say. "I thought he'd kill me outright but instead he played at concern, and made a cleric nearly work herself to death healing me up too fast so I'd be fit to travel. It was Phi who came and got me, who said she was the king's huntswoman and that we'd be traveling together."

Terry shifts abruptly at Phi's name and Quil doesn't look at him, she can't, because she knows where this is all ending -- with Phi going back to tell a brutal king news that will make him angry with her, with Phi in danger and Quil here with people who obviously love her, and she knows he won't be glad to hear it. But he asked her to tell him, and Phi told her to, so she does -- she tells him everything, tells him about the ruse Seath gave as the reason for their travel, that would make it so terribly tragic but not unexpected when she died on the journey, about thinking Phi was going to kill her, about the river and Seath's diviners and how they'd set out to deceive them, how Phi had sent Quil on ahead to find Terry and tell him what she knew, and how Phi had turned back to bring word to Seath that she'd died. About Seath's true plans for her, what he'd wanted Phi to do and how he'd planned to take Quil's power for his own.

"I'd like to see _him_ stuck up a tree," she mutters at the end of it, and startles a laugh out of Terry, which is what finally makes her able to turn towards him and drop her gaze enough to look at him again.

He looks so sad, and she hates that she has to be the one to bring him word of Phi like this. She catches her hands between her knees and presses them there, leaving the quilt draped but loose around her shoulders. "She told me to tell you everything," she finishes, her voice shaking just a little. "And I-- I have. I am. I've lived within his palace for long enough, I sat at his table and walked amongst his court, I'm sure there are things I could tell you that would be helpful to you in fighting against him. I know the names of his guards and who's usually on shift when, and which ones are kind and who's not worth the trouble of trying to win over. I don't know what you're planning well enough to know what you'd find helpful, but you only need to ask, and I'll answer as thoroughly as I can."

Terry lets out a long, long breath and turns his mug in circles between his hands, staring down into the depths of it for an endless moment. "There will be time for that, I think," he says at length. He gets to his feet and drains the last of the coffee from his cup. "Later, when we're not at risk of making the others fear we've both run off and met our match in the woods. Are you ready to go back?"

She stares up at him, something twisting sharp beneath her breastbone because this isn't _Let's go back inside and let everyone hear what you have to say together,_ this is him putting her off and she doesn't understand. It doesn't make any sense at all.

"I fought all this way to get here," she says, scarcely a whisper. "I froze and I starved and I hurt to make sure that I got to you, because Phi told me to, because she sent me to you so I could tell you what I knew. She went back and faced Seath's wrath so I could get to you. And you aren't interested in what I might be able to tell you?"

Terry draws himself up short and stares at her like he's just seen her, blinking. "Quil," he says eventually, when he can make his mouth do more than gape in silence. "I know Phi very well. Please hear me when I tell you, that is not why she sent you to us."

Quil makes a sharp, strangled sound and kicks out at a small stone in front of her, sends it skittering off to be lost in the tangled shadows at the base of a nearby tree. "It _is,_ she said so. She told me--"

"She told you to find us. She told you to tell us everything that had happened to you, so that _we could help you._ "

Quil snaps her mouth shut and stares at him, unblinking.

Terry sighs and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, like he's tired despite the coffee he just finished. "Quil," he says again, and it's so gentle that it makes her want to scream, because she _knows_ when she's being patronized. "All those conversations you had, before you even reached the river... She was trying to tell you to run. She was hoping you would. Trust me, she was."

Quil can't move, can't speak, can't do anything but sit there and stare, mouth agape, her chest too tight even to breathe past. "No, she--" Her voice is too thin, too broken. "Why wouldn't she--"

But she knows that answer, even before she's asked the question. The answer is Phi lying in her bedroll around a dying fire, saying, _Yes, he does have diviners_ with the emphasis all wrong. It makes better sense now, now that she's met Phi's siblings and learned the truth, now that she knows that Phi loves Seath no more than Quil does. Seath has diviners, and if she were to tell Quil plainly that she should run, they might hear her say it and report back. And Quil had thought she was as much a follower of Seath's as anyone else in his court, and hadn't listened well enough to hear her double meaning.

"She told me to tell you everything," she whispers, a bare, scant whisper. "She told me--"

"Phi is a very clever woman. She'd have known how the things you know might help us, of course she would have. But that wasn't her first reason for directing you to us. It wasn't even her third. "

Quil stares up at him, feeling as though she's back in the river, all the currents rushing too-fast around her. "Why would she do that?" she asks, desperate for understanding. "She didn't even know me, and he'd have been no less wroth to be told that she'd lost me in the forest, than that I'd drowned it the river. Why would she do that for me?"

Terry makes a half-strangled sound and passes a hand across his mouth, then up to his brow. "It doesn't take knowing someone to not want to kill them. And that may have been true at the start of your travels, that she didn't know you. But can you say it was by the time you parted ways? You followed her direction halfway through the forest on the strength of her telling you to alone. Why would you think she'd do any less for you?"

_Because I'm nothing,_ she thinks. _I'm no one. I'm the king's stolen orphan and just standing beside me puts your life in danger._   But even after only an evening and a morning to get to know Terry, she thinks she knows well enough how he'll like that answer. So she says nothing, just shakes her head again and sinks her head into her hands.

There's a rustle and movement next to her, Terry shifting about, and the weight of his hand on her shoulder. "May I join you?" he asks, and she chokes on another, strangled laugh.

She has to drop her hands to edge to the side, making space for him next to her on the rock, not much for either of them this way but it'll do if they press close. Terry takes it for the invitation it is and sits next to her, braces a foot up on the edge of the stone and uses his knee to prop his wrist on as he works at the buttons on the cuff of his sleeve. "I'd like to show you something," he says, gaze slanting sideways to catch hers. "Perhaps it'll help you understand Phi better. I think you deserve to hear it all the same."

Quil pulls in a little tighter on herself, too aware of all the ways she's impinging on his space, his elbow pressed to hers as he twists his arm to work the buttons free, and waits for him to say what's on his mind.

"You asked, last night, about Phi's bracelet, and what it meant."

Quil's mouth tightens and she makes a sharp, frustrated sound. "Everyone's been talking about how they know what it means, that she showed it to me, but no one will _tell_ me. I'm the one she showed, why don't I get to know why it matters?"

"Because it's not theirs to tell. It's Phi's, and it's mine." The last button comes free and Terry folds back his cuff and shakes his arm a little, and a bracelet drops out from under the sleeve to hang about his wrist, polished black with inlays of a warm, golden stone that gleams and flashes in the morning light. "What the bracelets mean is commitment. We exchanged them when we married, Phi and I."

Quil recoils in surprise, nearly enough to topple her off the edge of the stone, but Terry catches her arm and her tail whips out to counterbalance her, and between the two she manages to keep her seat, barely. "I thought--" She clears her throat and scrubs her face with the hand whose arm Terry isn't holding. His fingers are curled warm around her bicep and he's still holding on like he thinks she needs steadying, and it seems rude to shake him off. And she's not sure he's wrong, either. "Lanra called her _sister._ "

Terry smiles, and the warmth of it reaches all the way up into his eyes. "Lanra and Iain call her sister, and she considers them brothers. Same with Allan. I'm her husband, and Kal's one of her best friends, and mine, and considered family by virtue of that, and because of Iain. It's a complicated mess of a family, to be sure, but that's what we are to each other in the end."

Quil absorbs this for a moment, blinking as the shape of the relationships around her that she thought she'd mapped abruptly shift and rearrange beneath her feet. "I still don't understand why it means something, apparently, that she showed it to me."

"Ahh, well." Terry releases her arm and moves that hand behind her, instead, to brace himself against the rock they're sitting on. "Phi loves easily, and with the whole of her heart. She'd say otherwise, if you asked her, but she's wrong. It's not hard for her to love, but it is frightening. She knows too well how handing out pieces of her heart leaves it vulnerable. She's spent a long time working very hard to hide how well and how deeply she loves so that it can't be used against her, and it can't be taken from her."

"Seath," Quil says quietly, because of course he would do just that if he had even an inkling that there were people out here that Phi cared about. Of course he would use them to hurt her, or to control her. Quil knows that better than most, doesn't she?

Terry inclines his head in acknowledgment. "We're a family," he says quietly. "We're her family. And she sent you to us. She _told_ you about us, and directed you to us. It means that she trusts you, Quil, wholly and with the things that are most precious to her."

Quil pulls the edges of the blanket closer around her shoulders, clutching at the soft, time-worn fabric. She feels so small and so humbled by this gift that she was given, that she didn't even recognize the enormity of as it was laid into her hands. She doesn't feel worthy of it. "She doesn't know me," she chokes, shaking her head. "Not at all. How could she trust me with something like that? With all of _you?_ "

Terry looks thoughtful a moment, staring off into the trees that surround them. "The thing about trust," he says, "or love, is that it's a gift. There's not much point in questioning it after the fact; it's already been given. All we can really do is be humbled by it, and try to be worthy of it."

Quil takes a deep, deep breath, lets it out and squares her shoulders and says, "I will. I promise I will try."

Terry gives her a sharp glance and sits up straighter, turning to face her. "That wasn't a warning, Quil."

She presses her mouth together, thinks, _Wasn't it?_

Terry catches her hand and holds onto it, fingers closed around her wrist. "You don't have to earn something that's already been given to you."

"Of course I do," she says quietly, and gets to her feet, tugging the blanket up around her. "Thank you for the coffee, and for trusting me with the truth."

Terry looks at her like all at once he's unbearably sad. She tenses, expecting him to argue with her now that she's disagreed with him, but he just looks at her with heartbreak in his eyes for a moment, then stands as well, and takes up his emptied mug from where he'd set it down. "Of course." He turns her back towards the cottage with a barely-there touch on her shoulder. "Let's go back, and we can get you some more coffee, if you'd like it, and some breakfast. Iain was putting porridge on the fire when I got our coffee, it should be nearly ready by now, and I imagine you'll be glad to eat something that sticks to your ribs a little."

"I'll be glad for anything," she says as she begins to pick her way through the trees toward the cottage, wary of stepping on rocks that her hooves may slip off of. And ahead of her, Terry half-turns back to give her another look that starts off startled and then slides into sorrow. He doesn't say anything, though, just holds a branch up out of the way so she doesn't have to duck under it, and they walk the short distance back to the cottage together in silence broken only by the mismatched rhythm of their steps on the foliage underfoot.

*

Iain's porridge is hearty, and there's the indulgence of nuts mixed through it, and a stream of honey drizzled over the top. Quil eats with her bowl in her lap, quiet as the easy conversation between Terry and Kal and Iain fills the cottage. And she's nearly done, just scraping the last oat pieces from the sides of the bowl, when Terry lifts his head and looks towards the cottage door. "Ah," he says, his whole face brightening. "That'll be Lanra and Allan."

Kal follows Terry's glance towards the door, his browridge lowered in consideration. "They're earlier than I expected them. Are you sure?"

"Lanra's singing like he means to wake the whole forest up with it." Terry rises and takes down two more bowls from the shelf they're stacked on and begins to serve up porridge into them. "Can't you hear him?"

Quil can't hear anything but the wind and the birds and the sounds from inside the cottage, quiet conversation and the fire crackling and the porridge bubbling above it. But after a moment she thinks she starts to make it out, a melody lower than the birdsong, something jaunty and unfamiliar to her. As it gets nearer she can make out a second voice, mostly laughing but occasionally joining in to harmonize.

Iain gives up a glad cry and abandons stirring the porridge to dart outside, and the singing breaks off into a chorus of greetings and conversation. A moment later the door swings open again and Lanra comes inside, boisterous and bright, and holds it open behind him for Iain, who has his arm draped around the shoulders of a tall man with deep blue-black eyes and dark hair pulled back from his face, and who has to stoop a little when he comes through the doorway to keep the tips of his long, swept-back horns from catching on the frame.

He exchanges easy greetings with Terry and Kal, and Iain releases him so that they can come forward to greet him, Terry with a hug and Kal by affectionately ruffling a hand at the back of his head. "You're looking well," he says to Terry, holding him at arm's length with his hands on his shoulders so he can look him over. "I'm glad to see it."

"Iain's potions are a wonder, of course, but this isn't news to anyone. You wouldn't have liked the look of me half so well if you'd seen the shape I was in last night."

"Iain also poured half a dozen of them down his throat," Kal says, wry, while Lanra grunts his agreement.

The corners of the tiefling's eyes crinkle with a smile. "Good man," he says to Iain with a nod, and then his gaze slides past the others and finds Quil, and his brows lift and his smile brightens. "Hello. You must be Quil. Lanra told me a little about you while we walked."

She's been staring and she knows it's rude, but she can't help it, and he doesn't seem like he's taken offense at it. Still, she hurries to pull herself to her feet and cross to him, to clasp his hand in greeting. "Are you Allan? It's good to meet you. They said you were coming, and that we should speak."

"Is that so?" He turns a little and lifts a brow at Lanra and Quil flushes with chagrin. Apparently Lanra hadn't told him that part. But Allan looks back at her and his demeanor hasn't changed, he's still smiling, he still seems easy and warm when he says, "I'll look forward to that, then. But first, I believe I smell breakfast, and we've worked up an appetite on our walk."

Terry brings over the bowls he'd prepared for them, presses one into Lanra's hands and the other into Allan's, and Quil vacates the trunk she'd been sitting on, offering it to Allan and sitting on the bed instead, legs folded and tail tucked up around her ankle, on the opposite end of the bed from Terry.

She stares while he eats, too, despite herself, though this time it's not because of how heart-stoppingly good it is to be in the company of her own kind again, in a way she hasn't been since she was last with her mother. This time, it's with the discovery that he uses magic like it's water, like it's air, like it's as natural as flicking his tail or grasping something in his fist. Iain makes him laugh too hard in between bites of porridge and Allan's spoon slips from his fingers, and before it can land on the cottage's unswept floor, Allan throws a hand out and twists his fingers through the air and mutters a swift word in a language Quil can't place, and the spoon freezes as it topples end-over-end, hovering in the air for a moment before Allan twitches his fingers and the spoon rises and settles gracefully back on his palm. Kal asks Lanra about his trip to Allan's and back again, and when Lanra gets tongue-tied trying to describe a strangely-shaped tree they'd walked past that morning, Allan turns his hand over and sweeps the other across it, and magic sparks across the space between his hands and forms into a miniaturized depiction of the tree growing from his palm as though it were the earth, illustrating Lanra's point.

She tucks her hands inside her sleeves and pulls her hooves up under the hem of her skirt, curling around herself. Her fingers worry at the edge of one of the tears in her sleeve as she listens as attentively as she can manage to the conversations going on around them, and hopes that Allan doesn't notice the way she can't help but give him a sidelong glance every time he moves or gestures or summons magic to leap from his fingers and do his bidding.

"Lanra," Terry says, unfolding from his seat at the head of the bed and stretching his legs out as though they've gone weak or numb from sitting so long in the same place. "I could use about a dozen baths after being stuck in bed for so long. Will you help me carry some things down to the creek? I may as well scrub at some of my laundry, if I'm going to be getting wet anyway."

It's the work of a moment before Lanra has his arms full of a basket of laundry with a bar of cream-colored soap tucked in on top, and Iain declares he's going to accompany them so he can wash out the bowls from their breakfast and their supper the night before, and before Quil can even recognize what's happening well enough to protest, everyone's shuffled out and left her alone in the cottage with Allan.

She blinks at him across the width of the cottage, which somehow seems both vast and miniscule at the same time. "You--" The words burst out of her, unbidden, once they're alone. "You make it look so _easy."_

Allan looks startled, but not taken aback. And just as swiftly as the surprise came, a smile follows on its heels. "Will it help to hear that it's not? If certain spells seem easy to me now, it's only because I've spent a great deal of time practicing and memorizing them. And even then, there's only a handful of simple spells that I know well enough to do at will. Most I have to have studied recently, or I can't remember them well enough to cast them."

Quil's brow knits. She leans her chin on her knees and worries her lip between her teeth. "How do you _study_ your magic? I can't even get mine to hold still long enough to be useful, most days." She plucks at the frayed edge of the hole in her sleeve, twisting the ragged threads between her fingers. "I've figured out how to make it do a few things, but even that doesn't work half the time."

Allan unfolds from his seat and comes over to her. "May I?" he asks, catching her gaze and holding it, a question in his eyes. 

She shrugs one shoulder and slides a little closer to the foot of the bed, making room for him. 

He settles himself beside her and reaches toward her, laying a hand over hers to still her where she's got the edge of the hole caught between her fingers. "Will you let me help you with that? If you worry at it much more, it'll grow too big for me to be able to do anything with. But if you let me, I can help."

Quil looks down at the hole and flushes at the realization of what she's done, how much worse she's made it. She pulls back, says hastily, "You don't have to do that. I can sew it myself well enough, I know how to use a needle."

Allan smiles and turns to face her directly, crossing his legs on the bed. "You're ahead of me on that, then. I'm hopeless with a needle, I always have been. But I can help." This time, he holds his hand out, turned up and resting on his knee between them, an offering made without crossing the space that she put between them. "If you'll let me?"

_Let me,_ he says, as though she's somehow doing him the favor. She lets out a sharp breath but leaves his hand lying between them, open and empty. "With magic, you mean?"

He nods once, his gaze unwavering from hers.

She pulls air back into her emptied lungs and nods once, decisive. She reaches enough to let him catch the edge of her sleeve between his fingers. "Will you show me?"

"Of course." He keeps hold of her sleeve with one hand and lifts the other to the tear, traces his fingers over it in a complicated pattern and speaks words that mean nothing to Quil. His dark eyes are distant, unfocused, and she reaches out with her awareness so she can feel the way the magic spools off of his fingertips and sinks into the fabric of her dress, working into the warp and the weft. It's so _perfect,_ and it goes just where he directs it, and she feels like she did when she was first learning to sew, clumsy and fat-fingered, watching intricate embroidered designs appear beneath her mother's flashing hands while she struggled just to get her needle to pierce the right place in the fabric.

With the last word he speaks, Allan's magic flares bright and then fades, sinking into the fabric and disappearing, and in its place the ragged tear is gone, the threads woven back together until the place where they had been broken is invisible, the fabric smooth and perfect once more. Quil makes a soft sound and runs her fingers over it, but there's no trace left of magic, and none of the tear.

"It's a small magic," Allan says, shrugging a shoulder, and when she glances up at him he's looking unaccountably discomfited. "But it's useful."

_"Small?"_ She gives a shock of laughter. "It's wonderful. I wish my magic was half so helpful." She runs her fingers again over the smooth, unblemished fabric. "I tore Terry's quilt this morning, and he shrugged it off, said he'd ask you to fix it. I thought he was just trying to pawn my own mending responsibilities off to make me feel better, but now I understand why he'd want you to do it. I couldn't ever do work so fine with a needle and thread."

Allan's smile is warm, but it's a touch lopsided, and there's a little sadness about his eyes. "I can fix something that's broken with that spell, sometimes, if it's small enough. But you could sew a whole garment -- or a quilt -- with your needle, and create something that didn't exist before. Don't discount yourself, Quil, or the things you can do." She scoffs, unconvinced, and the expression in Allan's eyes sharpens a bit. "Would you like me to teach you how to do it? So you can mend it yourself?"

She sucks in a sharp breath of air and then finds that she can't release it, just stares at Allan with it trapped in her lungs until her chest aches. "You would do that?"

"Of course." He reaches between them again, and this time it's to cover her hand with his and squeeze it gently. "I gather your magic and mine work somewhat differently from one another, so I can't promise how good a teacher I'll be. But I can try." He lets go of her hand to reach up to the edge of the blanket, where it's pulled close about her shoulders, and tug a little at it. "Is this the quilt that tore?"

She nods and starts to climb off the bed so she can unwrap from it and show it to him, but freezes halfway through the motion, with one hoof on the floor and one knee still planted on the bed, her fingers gone tight and cold on the edges of the blanket. "Not-- Not this," she says, her voice coming harsh and a little jagged through her throat. She slides the blanket off from around her shoulders and folds it up, lays it neatly across the foot of the bed. "Not yet. Teach me on something else. Something no one will mind if I set fire to it."

Allan chuckles like she's made a joke, says, "All right, some scrap fabric, then, if you'd prefer," and she glances at him sharply as he crouches down beside the bed and feels around underneath. He makes a sharp, victorious sound and pulls out a shallow sewing basket, with folded up pieces of fabric and a pincushion with a handful of needles pierced into it, already threaded and ready for someone to take them up.

"Oh," Quil says softly, watching him sort through the pieces of fabric until he comes up with a small square of plain linen that seems to please him. "Lanra didn't tell you _everything,_ did he?"

"I imagine he didn't, no." Allan grasps both sides of the linen and tears it down the middle, halfway along its length, then holds it up and considers it, narrow-eyed. "Why?"

Quil sighs and drops down to sit on the bed's edge again, hands wrapped around the sides of the mattress and her legs swinging, hooves drumming lightly against the bedframe. "I'm not joking or being self-deprecating when I say I might set it on fire. It's happened. It happens. My magic gets restless, or slippery, and I can't control it and it just... does whatever it likes. Sometimes I teleport across the room without meaning to. Sometimes I see things that aren't there. Sometimes--" She makes a strangled, frustrated sound and cuts one hand through the air. "Sometimes I float away and get caught up a tree until Terry wanders by and rescues me. And sometimes, I set fire to myself and everything around me." Her throat is thick all of the sudden, her chest tight. She has to swallow twice before she can speak again, before she can confess what she hasn't said aloud, not to anyone, not since it happened: "I nearly killed my mother and sister that way."

Allan sits back on his haunches, the torn fabric forgotten in his hands, his face awash with quiet horror. And Quil would balk from that, would excuse herself and go walk through the cool serenity of the trees until she'd mastered herself again and had pushed down the hurt of it, until she could almost ignore it the same way she did with every callous, hurtful comment thrown at her in Seath's court, except that there's an equal measure of sympathy in Allan's dark eyes, and she thinks it's the first time she can remember that someone is horrified _for_ her, not of her.

"Okay," he says, and his words are gentle but decisive. "Scrap fabric, and we'll take this outside, just in case. Will that make you more comfortable?"

She can breathe again, all at once. She nods and rises, and takes the torn linen from Allan when he offers it to her. He follows her outside, and she leads him back to the rock she'd sat on earlier with Terry, far enough away from the cottage to keep it safe, farther than her flames have ever reached, even when her magic has been at its most volatile.

She settles onto it and spreads the linen across her knee, arranging the two sides to bring the edges of the tear in against each other. "All right." She glances up at Allan. "What do I do?"

He walks her through the incantation, one word at a time, until she can repeat the strange, unfamiliar syllables on her own without hesitation. And then he shows her the pattern of movements he'd made with his hand while casting the spell himself, and she practices those as well and tries to envision her magic working the way his does, orderly and obedient.

She doesn't hold out much hope, but she applies herself to Allan's lessons all the same, and he stands back and watches her with his arms folded over his chest and his head tipped to the side, like he's studying her, and occasionally when she glances up at him to check in, he smiles back at her and dips his head and says, "Good, that's perfect. Just like that," and waves a hand at her to continue.

It's an hour, perhaps, before he shifts his weight from one hoof to the other and Quil drops her hands to her lap, waiting to see what's on his mind. 

"Ready to try putting it all together?"

She's a little taken aback to have the decision placed in her hands rather than his. But she frowns and considers it a moment, murmurs the incantation he taught her under her breath just to prove to herself she can still recall it. "Yes," she says at length with a little nod. "I'll try."

He smiles and settles down onto his haunches, his forearms braced against thighs, watching her, and Quil freezes halfway through the first gesture of the spell, the incantation dying on her lips before she's even begun it. She lowers her hands carefully to her lap. "You should back up a ways."

He glances up at her, and he doesn't look startled. He looks the furthest thing from startled. He's somber and intent and he holds her gaze as he says, "No. I'm not going to do that."

Quil jerks, her hands twitching on her lap. "Please. I could hurt you."

"I'm not afraid of you, Quil."

The words make her breath hitch, make her throat burn and her eyes sting. She twists her fingers in her skirt and can't bring herself to look away from the resolve shining on his face. "You should be," she says, scarcely a whisper.

He gives a little crooked smile and shrugs with one shoulder.  "We're tieflings. Even if there _is_ fire -- and you said only sometimes there is -- it's going to have to work harder than it's used to on either of us. But I'm not going to walk off to where it's safe and leave you to face whatever comes by yourself."

She wants to say _I'm not going to do it, then,_ wants to push the scrap of linen back into his hands and let him fix the quilt and be done with it. But it's not about the blanket, of course it's not. 

"If you're trying to get me to keep control of my magic by giving me a reason to fear losing it," she says, her voice wavering a little as she nudges the threads of torn linen back into place with one another, "you are having the opposite effect."

Allan makes a noise that might have been a laugh, if there'd been more than a thread of humor in it. "That's a terrible way to teach. That's not why."

She tightens her jaw and begins to flick her hands through the first series of movements. "I'm _already_ afraid, all the time. It doesn't help."

"I know," Allan says. "I'm not trying to scare you. I'm trying to give you tools that might help."

She can't see how risking getting hurt has anything to do with that, but her magic is already rising in her, eager to be loosed after so much practice where she held it back, and there's nothing to do but to voice the incantation and try to coax it, with every word and every gesture, into the threads of the fabric.

It's a strange way to try to use her magic, so ritualized when she's used to just trying to grab and shove and coax. But it settles as she works her way through the incantation, and sinks into the linen like it's abruptly realized that she's trying to put it to use after all. She feels it flare against her hand as she makes the final gestures of the spell, like the warmth of a candle's flame, and then her magic retreats back inside her.

Allan makes a wordless noise that might mean anything, and Quil opens her eyes. The linen is lying on her lap, the two halves made whole, broken threads woven back together. It's not so neat as Allan's work on her sleeve had been, there's a slight distortion to the fabric where the tear had been, but it's a solid piece once more, and when Quil lifts it between her hands and tugs at it, the repair holds. 

She looks up at Allan, unable to help the smile breaking across her face. "It _worked?_ "

He's grinning back at her. "Very well done. And on your first try, too."

She shrugs a shoulder, flushing a little at the praise. "My magic wants to do things. _That's_ not the problem." She looks down at the linen again, gives it a tug to see if that evens the weave out any. It only helps a little, though, and when she runs her fingers over the fabric she can feel the unevenness, as though an inexpert hand left slubs in the spinning. "The problem is getting it to do what I want, and not do things I don't."

"Well," Allan says. "We know now that your magic will respond to formalized methods of casting. It's a good place to start from, and means I can hopefully be of more assistance to you than I was afraid I might. Why don't you start by telling me what spells you've been able to make work on your own, and we'll see what I might have in my spellbook that you'd like to learn next?"

She frowns a little, running her fingers back and forth over the bump in the linen fabric, over and over across the tear that her magic had mended, on the first try and without even really fighting her overmuch. "I can make fire," she says after a moment of thought. "Not-- I mean, not explosions like what I caught Terry in. But I can make small flames, to light a campfire or-- I caught a bird with it once, so I could eat."

Allan nods, says, "Aiming at and hitting a moving target like that is impressive. It takes skill." And then he waits, watching her expectantly, waiting for more.

She thinks back through the long journey up the river and to the cottage, of all those desperate days where she'd made her magic work because she'd had to, because she'd been starving and freezing and weary to the bone. "I can-- Well. I'll show you." She gets to her feet and stands before him, summons her magic to her in a way that's become familiar, by now, and lets it course over her from the point of her horns down to her hooves, sweeping away the dirt and debris that's managed to accumulate since that morning, from walking through the woods and getting caught in the tree and sitting on the stone behind her.

Allan gives a low whistle, and when she looks at him, he's beaming. "You've a solid grasp of cantrips," he says, "and that even without formal instruction. I can't even fathom discovering them naturally, the way you have. I had to study for weeks to be able to learn each one I know."

"Cantrips?" she echoes softly.

Allan gets a thoughtful look about him, his gaze angling off into the distance like he's trying to puzzle out the answer to her question before he gives it to her. "Magic is like a well, you could say, I suppose," he says after a moment. "If you sip from it slowly, it replenishes itself, and you can do so for as long as you like and it'll never run dry. But if you take greater amounts at a time, eventually you'll reach the bottom, and you'll have to wait for it to fill again before you can take more. Cantrips are like those little sips -- they're small workings that don't require much power, and once you've learned them well, you can cast them without fear of draining your reserves the way that larger or more powerful spells will."

"Oh," Quil says softly, and then, " _Oh._ That's why--" And then she freezes, words catching in her throat, and she lifts her fingers to press them to her mouth, to hold back a bubble of horrified laughter, because there's one more thing she's done with her magic, isn't there? And he's not going to be glad that she didn't tell him from the start. None of them will be.

She's already said too much to take back, though. Allan's watching her, curious, waiting for her to finish what she'd started to say, and so she blows out a sharp breath and drops her hands, and stares down at them, only darting uncertain glances up at Allan as she says, "There's one more thing I've done with my magic. It's not-- it's not like that, though. It's _exhausting._ "

Allan's eyes brighten. "A higher level spell? If we can discover the limits of your casting, it'll be helpful in knowing what I might be able to help you learn, and how much. And I can help show you how to pace yourself, so you don't exhaust yourself quite so readily. What's the spell?"

"I can talk to people," she admits on a bare breath. "Well-- I've only done it with one person, but I think I could do it with someone else, if I tried. But I can talk to them, a little bit, even though she's--they're--far away."

Allan's eyes go wide, his brows lifting. " _Sending?_ You figured out how to cast Sending, all on your own? That's a powerful spell, Quil."

She frowns, her mouth pressing into a flat, unhappy line. "It's not. It's-- I'm glad for it, but it's almost useless. I can only ever get a sentence or two out before the connection breaks, no matter how hard I try to hold it."

Allan moves towards her, reaching out and catching her hands in his, halting her frustrated gesture. "You sent your words across miles," he says quietly, insistently, with a weight to his words that refuses to let her shrug them off. "You sent them to the mind of someone far from you, someone you don't even know precisely where they might be, and you spoke to them. That's the spell you're talking about, right? Sending? That's a _powerful spell_. The reason you can only manage a few sentences is because of the amount of power it requires. No wonder it exhausts you."

She shakes her head, but can't find the words to refute him, not in any way that he'll hear. And while she wrestles with that, with the uncomfortable pressure in her chest that comes from being told one thing while feeling another, Allan shakes his shoulders out and sits up straighter, leans in towards her a little and asks, "Who have you been Sending to, Quil?" And she can tell by the look in his eye, by the way he's trying and failing to restrain the brightness dawning across his face, that he already knows the answer. 

She twists her hands together on her lap and admits, "Phi."

Allan shuts his eyes and lets out a long, long breath. He smiles, brilliant, radiant with joy and relief. "She's all right?"

"She's in Seath's palace, lying to protect me. She's in terrible danger." Quil heaves out a sigh. "Yes, she's all right. She was this morning."

"She's been in danger since the day she set out to find a way into his court, and we all knew she was going to be. None of the blame for that falls on you. But we haven't been able to speak with her before. We've had to go on faith that she was safe. This helps. It helps more than you know."

Quil gnaws on the edge of her lip. "Do you want me to tell her anything?"

Allan blinks a little, his gaze going distant and wondering. "So many things," he says softly. "But most would take more than twenty-five words to convey. Tell her-- Tell her I love her. _We_ love her. Tell her to be safe and to be smart, and to come home to us when she can." He pulls a face, and flicks his hand in a frustrated gesture. "Kal and Lanra will have other priorities, I'm sure. They'll want to know about how the palace is protected and whether anyone knew Terry was there that night, or suspected what he was there for. But those are mine. Tell her we love her, and we miss her."

Quil gives a breath of laughter, and offers him a slight smile. "It's going to take me days to get everyone's messages across, if I'm going to do it for all of you. But I'll do yours first." She catches his hand and squeezes it in her own. "As thank you, for helping me."  She hesitates, all too aware of the horrible, twisting uncertainty of having to wait to speak with someone you love, someone you fear for. "I could try to do it again? I've never been able to do it twice, not without a lot of time to regain my strength in between. But I can try."

Allan looks troubled, a frown creasing his brows and pulling down the corners of his mouth. "Even doing it once is a feat. I wouldn't want you to tax yourself."

It hurts worse to see him frown like that, to see him pensive and not entirely pleased, when he'd been so glad just moments before. "I'm going to try," she says, decisive. "If I can just be strong enough--"

Allan's protests quiet when she grasps her magic and throws it out, casting it towards Seath and the palace and Phi. It doesn't race across the distance like it had when she'd done it that morning, it's slow and sluggish, and she has to prod and cajole to get it to do anything at all. It's tired, _she's_ tired, but Allan is still looking so somber, so she tries again, catches her magic up in a fist and _shoves_.

It dances away from her touch, twists and bends but in the wrong direction, to the wrong purpose. Quil blows a sharp breath through her teeth and tries to shove it into place, thinking of Allan and the light in his eyes, and how quickly it died. Of all of them, and how much they'll want to talk to Phi, and how little else she can do to repay them for the kindnesses they've already shown her. 

_You_ know _how to do this,_ she thinks ferociously, grabbing at her magic and twisting it. _You did it this morning, there's no reason you can't do it now. Just_ work _, please--_

And all at once her magic jolts in her grasp, transforms from slack and listless to a living, _struggling_ thing, wrapping itself up into patterns that don't mean anything to her, but all at once frustration turns to fear because the patterns may be meaningless but she _knows_ what it means when her magic is like this, spreading and reaching, sending out tendrils that branch and then branch again, until the air is thick with her magic all around her and it's hard to breathe past the weight of it, and the pressure builds until the hint of warmth on the late-morning air turns hot, like a midsummer day under the blazing sun, and then the heat becomes unbearable and she can feel the threat and the promise of flames, can feel it in the crackling, pent-up tension in the air and she doesn't even have time to shout a warning but everything in her screams, _No, no, no, no, no--_

Allan's eyes go wide with alarm, too late, and oh, she _hates_ her magic, she'd dig it out of her and cast it away if she could, but it's too late and he's going to burn, they both are--

Allan throws a hand up between them, as though that could keep the conflagration from him, and he says something, sounds that are brief and sibilant and discordant, and that echo in Quil's ears strangely and make her falter, that seem to insinuate themselves between the strands of her magic and break them apart even as they try to cinch tighter.

And then-- then her magic falls apart, all the fight going out of it, and it retreats within her and curls there and she gapes, slack-jawed, at Allan who's standing across from her, who isn't hurt, who hasn't burned, and who's wide-eyed and gasping too, staring at her, but he _isn't hurt._

"What--" Quil has to gulp air to fill her aching, empty lungs. "What was _that?_ "

Allan stares at her as though he's only just realized how much truth there was in the fears she confessed to him. He shakes himself a little and scrubs both his hands over his face before dropping them and answering her directly. "It was a counterspell," he says. " _Gods,_ Quil--"

She flinches back, hugging her arms around her ribs. "I'm sorry. I _told_ you--"

"You've done that before? On _accident?_ "

"Of course on accident. As though I'd set myself on fire on purpose." She sighs and steps back, putting more distance between them, since he won't. "I _am_ sorry. I didn't-- I should have listened to you. It was too much, to try to do that again when I already did it this morning, and I tried too hard."

He still looks half-stunned, but he waves a hand through the air at that, as though to dismiss the matter entirely. "Testing the boundaries of our limitations is how we grow. We'll work up to that, I think. For now--" He has a leather-bound book hanging from a harness on his belt, the same way a soldier might have a sword hanging on a scabbard, and he reaches for it and unbuckles the straps with one hand, then looks at her in surprise, like he's only just realized that she's edged far enough away to put the space of half a dozen strides between them. "Why don't you come over here and we can look through this, and you can see if anything strikes your fancy?"

She gives a breath of disbelieving laughter and shakes her head in wonderment. "I might have killed you just now."

He tips his head to the side and reaches one hand up to scratch behind a horn, considering. "You might have hurt me," he says like he's agreeing with her, though it's not the same thing at all. He lifts his brows at her, gives her a pointed look. "You didn't."

And that's a miracle, it really is, but it doesn't do anything to make her trust herself more. It was only luck that there was a spell that could undo what her magic did, and that Allan knew it and was able to cast it before the flames erupted. What if he wasn't so quick next time? What if her magic caught him by surprise?

Something in Allan's expression goes soft as he watches her. He tucks his book under his arm and crosses to her, a few quick strides and he's in front of her before she has the chance to jerk back and retreat. He catches her hands in his and holds onto them, leans down a little bit so that he's looking directly into her eyes as he says, "Quil, listen to me. Even if you _had_ hurt me, I would still be doing this. I would still want to help you."

" _Why?_ " She shakes her head violently, hard enough that her hair whips about and strands catch on the corner of her mouth, on the curled points of her horns. "It's foolish. I'll hurt you. If not today then tomorrow, or the day after--"

"Because I might be able to help," he says quietly, still holding on to her. "Because you can't walk away as easily as I can, and maybe if I stay, I can keep you from getting hurt. What if you'd attempted that on your own, and I hadn't been here to cast a counterspell?"

"You would be safe."

"And you wouldn't. And I would be wracked with guilt, knowing I could have helped you but didn't." He lets go of her hands and pulls out his book again. Quil wraps her arms around herself again, fingers curled in the fabric of her dress, but doesn't retreat. "Here, look at this," he says, and flicks a hand, magic dancing off his fingers and flipping through the pages of the book as though a breeze had just blown through the woods. "I think it's a good place to start, if you want to learn it."

Quil frowns, her mouth pressed into an unhappy bow, and starts to say, _No, I'm not doing any more spells, how can you expect me to do magic again when it was nearly so disastrous?_ But the words are barely formed on her lips when she catches a glimpse of the page that Allan has turned to show her, despite herself, and she freezes. 

Half of it makes no sense at all, glyphs and runes drawn in a complicated pattern across the parchment with notations formed out of strange letters in an alphabet she doesn't recognize. But there's something there, something her magic recognizes and responds to, and it rises in her like hope. She reaches out uncertainly and traces her finger across one of the lines of the glyphs and sees, somehow, the shape her magic would take if she cast it, how it would twist and bend until it had wrapped itself like a cage around her. "What is it?" she asks, snatching her hand away as though it had burned her, before her magic gets ideas of its own. 

"Protection." Allan draws a frayed ribbon from where it had been laid elsewhere in the book and tucks it between the pages to mark their place. "It's a simpler spell, it's not going to be able to keep you entirely from being hurt by your magic if it decides to erupt like that again and I'm not around to counterspell it. But it'll help. It'll mean you get hurt less."

A cage of her own magic, protecting her from itself. It's ironic, but it seems fitting. She edges closer, a little, so she can eye the page again and see it better. "You can cast this spell?"

He nods. "It's one of the first I learned." His mouth curls with a smile, and humor brightens his voice. "It's helpful for those of us who don't have the strength to cart about fifty pounds of armor on our backs."

"I'll try to learn it," Quil says. "I'll-- I'll be glad for your help. But only if you cast that on yourself first. Just in case."

His smile widens, and warms. "A demonstration, then." He shuts the spellbook and buckles it back into its place on his belt, and gives it a little pat as though to assure himself its secure. "And then I'll walk you through how to cast it yourself."

It's a quick spell when Allan does it, a brief sweep of his hands and an incantation, and Quil can feel the magic settle on him. When she tries to echo him, though, little happens. Her magic shifts about but doesn't answer her call, and there's certainly no lovely, comforting cage of magic around her.

Allan has her go through it another half-dozen times, correcting the smallest bit of her pronunciation or gesturing, and then watches her with a small frown pinched between his brows, and says, "Hm," after her last attempt, like she's somehow stumped him when he's meant to be the one teaching her.

She drops her hands and releases her magic to settle back beneath her skin. "I'm sorry," she says before he can tell her what she already knows, that it isn't working, that she isn't even making progress. "It shouldn't be this hard, should it?"

"There's nothing wrong with your technique. You've got the gestures down, and you're maybe still a little hesitant with the incantation, but not so much that it should keep you from being able to cast the spell. The problem isn't _you._ " Allan stretches his back out, then reaches a hand down to help her up from where she's been sitting to practice. "You've worked several big magics already this morning, and you may simply be at your limit. Besides, drilling you on half a dozen spells in a row isn't going to do anything to help you retain what you've learned. Perhaps we'd be best suited by calling it a day, and letting you have the rest of the afternoon and evening to regain your strength and rest yourself."

Quil frowns at the suggestion. "It's not, though, I've been able to do more than this-- I should be able to do more--"

Allan just smiles at her, gently, and clasps her shoulder. "Your magic didn't take it too well when you tried to overexert yourself with a second Sending spell," he reminds her, and she snaps her mouth shut and flushes with guilt. "Best not to push it twice in one day. You can always practice your cantrips some more, if you want to keep at it. They're small enough spells that you should be safe from overdoing it with them."

"And-- If I'm not--" Quil plucks at a few pine needles that caught on her skirt and have worked themselves too deeply into the fabric to be easily shaken free. "You'll be ready to do your counterspell again, right?"

"I won't let you set fire to anything, or hurt yourself or anyone else." He squeezes her shoulder once before releasing it, and turning back towards the cottage. Quil falls into step beside him. "I promise."

It's not entirely reassuring, when he hasn't seen the true force of her magic and what it can do when it slips her grasp. But she breathes a little easier, remembering how deftly his magic had worked through the threads of her own and torn apart the half-formed spell. Even if it's only a _chance_ that he could stop her before she hurt anyone, it's still more than she's ever had before. 

*

Everyone else beat them back to the cottage, it seems. There sounds of conversation coming from inside the house, and glimpses of movement through the open door, and outside Terry is pink-skinned, looking freshly scrubbed and with his wet hair plastering itself to his neck and dripping into his eyes as he hangs laundry from a clothesline strung between two trees. He turns as they come out of the woods from the other direction, and the wariness in his eyes clears all at once into a glad smile. "Have you two been off getting into mischief while we left you unsupervised?"

"Of course," Allan answers with a laugh, before Quil can respond. "The very worst kind of trouble. How was your bath?"

Terry makes a face and shudders dramatically. "I'll be glad when summer comes properly, and the stream isn't so full of meltwater that just dipping a toe in makes my teeth chatter." His teasing humor fades a little, leaving him more sincere when he adds, "But it was good to wash the last few days off of me. I feel more myself now that I'm on my feet, and don't smell like I've been lazing in bed for a week."

"You've been the very picture of sloth, lately," Allan says, his voice dry as a bone. "It's good to see you looking yourself again, I'll admit. You had us worried there."

Quil ducks inside while they talk. The quilt is still there, folded where she left it at the foot of the bed and she sits and pulls it onto her lap, finds the tear and skims her fingers lightly over it but doesn't weave her magic into the broken threads, not yet.

Allan finds her there, when he comes inside a few minutes later. His gaze takes in her, the quilt laid over her lap, her fingers resting against the tear, before it lifts back up to meet hers. "Ready to give that a try, do you think?"

She presses her lips together and gives her head a quick shake. "You should still do it. I'm not very good at it. You could see where the rip had been, when I did it on the linen. I don't want to ruin it."

"Repairing it isn't ruining it," he says softly, but doesn't push otherwise. "And you learned this cantrip in the space of a morning, you're the farthest thing from _not good at it_. It takes time and practice, that's all."

She tightens her jaw, notches her chin up. "Well, I'm not practicing on _this_."

Allan blinks a little at her sudden, uncompromising tone, but then smiles just as quickly. "As you like." He moves across the room and puts another log onto the fire in the hearth, and seems content to leave it at that as he takes one of the few chairs for his own.

Quil eyes him sidelong for several long moments, her fingers twitching with the urge to do _something,_ to be useful, before she comes to an abrupt decision. "Don't let me set anything on fire," she says to Allan, and scarcely waits for his glance and acknowledgment before she twists the sleeve of her dress around her arm, pulling at it until she can get to a place on the elbow that ripped when she fell once while she was making her way upstream. She waves the gestures Allan taught her over it, aware of and comforted by the weight of his quiet gaze on her as she works, and when she's finished the incantation and magic has leapt from her fingers and sunk into the weave, she pulls her hand away and inspects the fabric beneath it, the smooth, unbroken fabric stretching over her elbow, marked only by an uneven line of weaving where the broken threads had mended themselves.

It's still not good, not enough to use on the quilt, but she twists and bends her arm and then tugs at the fabric directly next to where the tear had been, and the repair holds.

It's good enough for her purposes, at least, and so she spends the next hour working over her dress, finding all the places where it ripped or snagged during her journey, and setting it to rights. By the time she's done, or at least done with everything she can see and reach, the dress at least doesn't look as though she'd spent a week rolling through a briar patch, even if the repairs aren't fine enough for it to ever pass muster in court again.

Terry comes in from outside while she's standing in the middle of the room, twisting about as she strains to look over her shoulders, and see whether there's anything on the back of the dress that needs repairing. Allan is laughing at her quietly, one hand lifted to cover his mouth, and Terry looks from Quil to him and back to her again, and an answering smile begins to tug at his lips. "What's going on? Is this some new sort of dancing that Seath favors in his court? This is the trouble with being a tyrannical aristocrat, no one will dare to tell you that your new favorite dance looks as though someone's had a wasp fly up their petticoats."

Allan laughs, less quietly, and Quil flushes a little but grins at him at the image. "Allan taught me how to use my magic to mend things. I'm getting practice with my dress, but I can't tell if there's anything torn on the back, not--" Not without taking it off, which means not without evicting everyone from the cottage for a time, and she's not willing to do that, not for something as paltry as fixing a tear. 

"I did offer to help," Allan points out, to Terry rather than to her.

"I don't want you to fix it for me. I want the practice."

Allan and Terry exchange a look, and she doesn't know what it means but they're both smiling through it, at least. Terry faces her squarely and gestures with one hand, drawing a circle through the air. "Stop twisting yourself up like a rope, then," he tells her, "and turn about, and I'll tell you if you missed anything."

She straightens and turns, turns her back to him, spinning slowly in place, and when she's come all the way around again and is facing him, he's watching her with an expression she can't name. 

"What? What is it?" She twists, straining once again to see over her shoulder, to see what it is that caught his attention like that. "What's wrong? Is it hopeless?"

"No." Terry clears his throat and smiles at her again. "It's perfect."

She frowns at him dubiously.

"Honest. There's nothing torn or out of place. You look-- Perfect." He looks past her to Allan. "I was going to go forage a little, and see what I could scrounge up to add to our supper, to see if we can stretch Lanra's stew to feed us all another night. Would you like to join me?"

Allan smiles at him and stands, reaching for a coat that he'd thrown over the back of his chair earlier when he'd come inside. "I'd be glad to, though I'd have thought Iain would be the better choice."

Terry pulls a face as they turn for the door. "He's decided he needs to brew a new batch of healing potions. Seems to have some notion that I might not be capable of keeping myself in one piece in my own right."

Allan's eyes glitter with humor. "I suspect it's not your capability that's in question," he says, "so much as your willingness. We all know you, Terry. We know you're capable." He lets the, _We also know you're the sort of person who will get himself exploded because you'd rather run toward trouble than away from it like you're told_ hang in the air, so palpable that even Quil can hear it, though it's left unspoken. 

They take their leave of her, and she waves them off, then makes her own way outside to find Iain and see if there's anything she might be able to do to help him.

She spends most of the afternoon crouching at Iain's side, watching him sprinkle seeds across a stretch of soil that they've prepared together, then press his fingers into the earth and coax the seeds to sprout and grow. She peppers him with a hundred questions while they work, which he never seems frustrated with or tired of. He answers each of them, answers them thoroughly, and asks her questions about her magic and how it works in turn, and the hours pass quickly and leave her in quiet awe of the things he's able to accomplish. She can't imagine trying to do something as delicate as coax new life into being with her magic, which most times seems like it's about as precise a tool as a sledgehammer.

"That's enough for today," Iain decides, when the forest is beginning to darken around them and they've got a small garden patch full of gangly, tender shoots, just beginning to bud. He pushes himself up to his feet, wiping the soil off of his hands and then grimacing down at them, and the dirt that's still worked under his nails and into the creases of his palms. "I could force them to grow to maturity all at once, but the potion won't benefit from that. It'll be stronger and more stable if we spread the growing out over a couple days."

Quil reaches towards him, then hesitates, and starts to draw back. "I can help, I think? With the dirt, I mean." She chews on the edge of her lip. "There's a thing I've done for myself. I think I could do it for you, too." And it's foolish, it's so foolish, she already ended up stuck in a tree today because her magic slipped her grasp, it was only because Allan was quick and clever that they didn't both get burned, and a swath of forest around them to boot. She shouldn't have said anything, she shouldn't have dared--

Iain smiles at her, though, and reaches across the distance that she left between them, placing his hands in hers. "Please, by all means." And he knows what she did to Terry, if not what nearly happened with Allan this morning, but he doesn't look nervous or concerned, and she honestly can't fathom any of these people at all.

She could back out now, could demur and say that she'd better not, just to be safe, and she thinks he would let her. But she's so tired of being afraid of herself all the time, and if he isn't... Maybe there's _something_ , even if it's something small, that she can do without having to flinch in fear every time she attempts it.

She takes hold of his hands, clasping them securely, and draws up her magic and thinks, _All right, we've done this, we've done this a dozen times. Don't let me down now, please._ And she sends it along the connection between them, his palms pressed to hers, and sweeps it over Iain the same way she's done over herself. 

When she's done and she opens her eyes, Iain's hands in hers are as clean as if he'd just scrubbed them, and Iain is beaming at her. "That's brilliant." He turns them over and looks at them, looks under his nails and at his cuticles, all the places where grime might collect, and he laughs like he's just seen something wondrous, like _this_ is a miracle, when she just watched him draw flowers from the earth as though weeks had passed instead of hours. "I'd spend so much more time gardening if I knew I wasn't going to have to trudge down to the creek to wash up afterwards every time."

She flushes, pleased and a little embarrassed, and glad not to have had her magic rebel against her, and he nudges his shoulder against hers when she ducks her head but otherwise doesn't comment, just walks with her to the cottage, where everyone else has gathered from their various tasks for the day, drawn by their appetites and by the tempting smell of the stew wafting out, as Lanra reheats it over the fire for the evening's meal.

There are nuts and berries and some tubers that Terry and Allan had found, to round out the meal, and the little cottage is close and warm and full of laughter and good spirits as they eat, packed close enough that their elbows jostle against one another as they do so, and Quil mostly listens between bites as they talk with one another, catching up and sharing what they spent the day at. Iain talks about his work with the flowers, and makes Quil flush again when he says that she helped, though she really didn't do much more than ask questions and get in the way. Terry makes them all wheeze with laughter when he tells about  slipping on a slick bit of algae-covered stone at the creek's edge and plunging in with the whole basket of laundry, and having to slosh his way to retrieve shirts and trousers and socks from the stones and branches they'd washed up against for half a mile downstream, all before he'd even gotten his bath in.

"Well, it's good to see you feeling better," Lanra says, once the laughter and teasing has died down. "Somebody ought to go and tell Gari that you're back on your feet sooner rather than later, I imagine. She'll be relieved to know it."

Whoever Gari is, mention of her makes most of the men grow sober. Terry tips his head back, face tilted up to the roof of the cottage, and scrubs a hand over his mouth. "You're not wrong. We should've sent word to her days ago."

"You were somewhat preoccupied days ago," Iain says, sharp all of the sudden. "We all were."

"She'll still want to know. She needs to know." 

Iain hums a little, like he's considering the point but not yet conceding it. Then he lifts a shoulder in a shrug. "I can get word to her, at least that she should start making her way here so we can tell her everything in person. I won't be able to until tomorrow, though, and it'll take a day or so on top of that. There's only so fast that even birds can fly, after all, unless I get very lucky and find a falcon I can manage to coax into carrying a message."

His words are light as he says them, as though it's a well-worn joke, and the others hum their agreement and nod and no one marks it at all, as though no one's noticed that he's just casually started talking about using a wild falcon as a carrier pigeon. 

Quil drops her spoon into her half-emptied bowl of stew and gapes at him. "You can _do_ that?"

Iain looks surprised for a moment, then smiles. "I can do a number of things when it comes to nature and animals and the elements," he says. "And not very much beyond that. My talents aren't like Allan's -- or like yours, I imagine. They have a lot of depth, but not much breadth." He doesn't say it like he's bitter about it, or like he minds the difference. He says it easily, gladly. "But yes, at times I can speak to the small beasts of the forest, and convince them to carry a message for me. They can't take it very far, so it's of somewhat limited use, but it's helpful for communicating between the lot of us when we're all scattered through the woods the way we are. They could get a message to Gari -- that's our sister -- and tell her to come, and save one of us from having to go retrieve her. But they couldn't carry a message all the way to the palace from here, for example. That's a long ways to ask a creature to go, no matter how much we might wish to get a message to our _other_ wayward sister."

Quil glances sharply at Allan, her heart speeding. But he catches her gaze and reads the question there, and gives his head a little shake -- it's not a pointed comment from Iain, then, trying to hint that he knows what she can do, trying to prompt her to say it. Just a coincidental one. But, oh gods, if there's going to be any chance that the rest of them will take learning of her omission as well as Allan did, she has to tell them now. She won't have any way to justify it, if she doesn't.

"Oh," she says softly, and looks down at her hands for the rest, at the bowl and spoon that are still cupped in them. "I could, though. I mean, I can. Get a message to Phi." Fear feels like a sharp-edged stone in her throat, and she swallows against it, then dares a glance up at all the faces around her, all of them but Allan's transformed with shock. She hastens to add, before they start asking things of her that she can't provide, "Not a long one, and I've only ever been able to do it once in a day at most. I tried to do it twice today and it-- I shouldn't do that again. But I _can_ talk to her, a little, and she can answer me. I could pass something along to her tomorrow, if you want."

There's an instant of silence, everyone gaping at her and looking stunned, that's followed by a cacophony of sound as everyone clamors to speak all at once. Quil recoils from it, opens her mouth to speak and then shuts it without saying anything, fighting back the sudden urge to run, from the noise and from the room full of half a dozen people all suddenly wanting something from her.

Before she can do more than shrink back, Terry takes a breath, steels himself visibly, and pitches his voice loud enough to carry over everyone else's. "All right, come on, now, she's not going to be able to tell Phi anything except how terrible our manners are, if we can't bring ourselves to speak one at a time, and wait our turn. Quil, are you all right?"

She sets her bowl down on the floor, her supper still only half eaten, and presses her hands between her knees. "Yes," she says. "Of course."

Terry looks unconvinced. He rises from the seat that he's taken for his own at the head of the bed and comes over to her, crouches down onto one knee so they're more on a level and tries to take her hands in his. When she doesn't release them from between her knees, he curls his fingers loosely around her wrists instead and looks up at her, very close and very serious and very earnest. "You don't have to do this," he says softly, and startles her so badly that she jerks, and wonders if that's why he held onto her, to keep her steady. "We love and miss and worry for Phi, that's all you're hearing here. But we all knew this was going to be the situation when she left us, that we were going to have to go long stretches of time without being able to speak with her, so we didn't tip Seath off to the fact that she was more than she said she was. We've planned for it, and come to terms with it, and it can stay that way if it needs to."

"She's your _wife._ "

Terry smiles a little, and it looks horribly, wrenchingly sad. "She is," he agrees. "But we were both soldiers when we met, and soldiers when we married, and we knew what this life would ask of us. If it's too much for you, you do not have to do this."

"It's--" Quil drops her gaze, studying her lap, and drops her voice just as low as Terry did his. "I want to help. I do. But I don't know if I'm up for it."

"The magic?"

She blows out a sharp breath and looks away. "Carrying all your hopes. Being responsible for them. What if I'm not... enough."

"Quil."

She can't look at him, can't look at any of them, with the brightness of that hope shining from their faces. 

" _Quil,_ " Terry says again, soft and insistent. His fingers press to the insides of her wrists, and he waits, waits until she draws a shuddering breath and glances up at him, through the cascade of hair that's fallen across her face. "You are remarkable. You have to know we have every faith in you--"

"Oh gods." She chokes on a laugh and drops her head forward. She wants to cover her face with her hands, but Terry's still holding onto her, holding her carefully, and she can't bring herself to shake him loose. "That's worse. Thank you, but that's so much worse."

He's quiet for a long, long moment. "Okay," he says. "Okay. How can I help you?"

She's still, and everyone else in the cottage is quiet, and Terry is still holding her like she's fragile. Or, she thinks, as his thumbs sweep over the insides of her wrists, like she's something he's afraid to break. "What?" she says on a breath.

"You're not alone, Quil. If you don't think you're up to it on your own, then let me remind you, you don't have to be." He tugs at her hands, and this time, she lets him draw them from between her knees. He slips his hands into hers and squeezes them reassuringly. "If it's the magic, Allan can help, I'm sure. If it's something else--"

"There's so many of you," she says on a rush, threading her fingers through his and gripping tight. "And I know you're all going to have so much you want to say, and I can never manage to say more than a little bit to her at a time, and I'm going to muck it all up, or take a week to say it all, or--"

"It's all right. Quil, it's all right. I'll help you."

"Allan said it's only twenty-five words, that's _nothing,_ it's--"

"It's more than we had before. It's _incredible_ , Quil. Even if it were five words, it'd be incredible. But I'll help you. We'll--" He glances over his shoulder at the others, who are doing their best to not look like they're hanging on every whispered word. "I'll talk to the others, and we'll decide what's most important to tell her first, and I'll help you figure out how to say it. All right?"

She nods, jerky, her breath still shuddering and unsteady. But she nods, and Terry looks quietly, fiercely glad. "I'll try," she says, very quiet. "I'll do what I can."

"Good." He squeezes her hands once more before releasing them, and reaching down to pick up her bowl of stew. He presses it back into her hands. "First, what you can do is finish your supper. Even half-starved, you eat like a bird. Finish it, and we'll talk afterwards."

She nods at that, too, and eats the stew, though it's gone cold, and while she hunches over her bowl, Terry moves amongst the others, speaking quietly with each in turn, clasping their hands or their shoulders or drawing them into an embrace. And when she's finished eating, Terry's there at her side without her having to say that she's ready, a hand on her shoulder. "Would you like to talk outside?"

The suggestion nearly swamps her with relief. She nods gratefully and gets to her feet, but before she can turn for the door, Terry catches her by the sleeve to stop her, then goes to the bed and swats at Lanra's shoulder until he stands. When he does, she can see that he was sitting on the quilt she'd wrapped up in that morning. Terry grabs it from the bed and brings it to her, wraps it around her shoulders and holds it there until she grasps the edges to keep it in place.

"All right," he says, satisfied, and slides his hand down her arm to curve at her elbow. "You're going to have to lead the way once we're outside. Human eyes are great while the sun's up, and then they're worthless. Gods know where I'd wander off to if I tried to go it on my own."

"I won't let you get lost," she promises him, and they duck outside together into the chill night air, leaving the light and the warmth of the cottage behind, glowing like a lantern against the dark

Quil guides him out to the same place they'd been that morning, the flat rock that's good for sitting on, and she settles herself cross-legged on it with the quilt wrapped around her, a buffer against the cold. Terry sits opposite her, facing her with their knees almost touching. "All right," she says, and tries to sound sure even if she doesn't feel it. "Tell me what everyone wants to say to Phi, and let's see what we can do with it."

*

 She wakes with the dawn again, a lifetime habit too well-ingrained to break, but this time when she tries to rise to make her way outside, a hand drops off the bed at her back and presses to her shoulder and Terry's sleepy voice mumbles, "Stay. Sleep. It's too early to be up yet."

She stills at the warm pressure of his fingers through her shift, and answers on a breath, "I'll toss and turn if I stay, and wake everyone else up."

"Stay," he says again. "There's nothing that needs you this early in the morning."

She thinks to herself that there's any number of things that she could occupy herself with despite the hour, not least of which is conveying their message to Phi, now that her magic has had the night to recover. But despite herself and every impulse she has, she lets the careful weight of Terry's touch urge her back down, and even once she's lying again the warmth of his hand on her shoulder blade stays with her, as though he means to keep her there by virtue of that careful touch alone.

She doesn't expect to sleep again, isn't usually able to once she's woken, but with Terry's hand on her shoulder making her feel grounded, she manages to doze a little, and when she wakes again the cottage is brighter, and there are the sounds of others stirring around her, of Kal and Iain exchanging quiet, whispered words to one another, and Lanra stretching beneath his blankets with a quiet groan.

Quil sits up and Terry doesn't stop her this time, just lets his hand fall away. He kicks the blankets off and pushes himself upright as she rises. "Give me a moment to get shoes on," he says. "I'll be right there."

Quil goes still, hesitating as she reaches for the quilt to wrap up in. "You're coming with me?"

He looks startled by the question, and then resolute. "Yes. I'd like to."

There's little point in him being there, when he can't even hear the exchange and she won't be able to pass on any reply until tomorrow anyway. He could stay in bed and sleep and she could leave and come back with whatever Phi had to say to them in response and he'd have missed out on nothing except the bracing nip in the morning air. But she's his wife, of course he'd want to be there, so all she says in response is, "Allan's coming too, then."

Terry looks, perhaps, a little perplexed, but he doesn't argue, just nods and picks his way across the cottage floor to where Allan is sleeping, to grasp his shoulder and shake him a little and murmur, "Wake up, sleepyhead. She wants you with us when she speaks with Phi."

It's the work of only a few moments for the other two to be up and ready, shrugging into coats and sitting on the edge of the bed to tug on boots. When they're finished and looking to her, waiting and attentive, she nods once and turns, steps out into the cool morning air and leads them away from the cottage.

"Terry," she says as she settles herself down onto her stone seat. "You should keep some distance, in case this goes wrong."

Terry sits, not so near as he'd been the night before but still far, far too close. Close enough he'd have no chance to escape the flames, if her magic misbehaved and summoned them forth. "I'm not going to do that," he says, very soft and very firm. And she wants to argue with him, she wants so badly to scream at him that she's already burned him once, how many times will it take for him to learn that she can't be trusted.

She looks to Allan instead, helpless, and Allan holds her gaze and sits beside Terry. "I'll be ready," he tells her. "Just in case." And then, with a smile, "You're going to be fine. We all are."

She could argue with him about _that,_ too, but what would be the point in it? So she just nods once and reaches for her magic, grasps it and casts it out to the west in a way that's starting to become familiar. And when the magic catches and holds and doesn't twist out of shape, she lets out a long breath she hadn't meant to be holding and reaches across that connection, reaches for Phi and thinks the words that she planned out with Terry the night before, the most important things that any of her family have to say to her: _Everyone loves you. Are you safe? Is Seath suspicious? You can come home if you need or want to. There's other ways to do this._

There's a pause, a moment of stillness where Quil gets not the sound, but the sense, of a long-held breath being slowly let out. _I'm fine. Seath is suspicious, but he always is. Please tell everyone how much I love them. I can't come home, not without risking you--_

Quil's breath hisses out of her as the connection breaks, frustration burning through her like fire, and it's all she can do to resist the impulse to try to reforge that link between them. She opens her eyes and sees Terry and Allan's faces before her, watching her, uncertain and hopeful.

"She loves you," she says, to start with, and is glad to get to see the way it makes joy break across both of their expressions. "She's fine, or she says she is, anyway. She says Seath is suspicious, but--" Quil chews on her lip and twists her fingers together in her lap. "She said he always is, and she's not wrong. He's suspicious of everyone, whether he has cause to be or not. I don't know if it means that she's in true danger, or just the usual amount of risk that living at court carries with it."

Terry leans forward and catches her hand, grips it tightly. "What did she say about coming home?"

Quil lets her breath out slowly and shakes her head. "She says she can't, not without risking you all, and she's not wrong about that either, really. If she left, if she just walked away from her post -- _that_ would make Seath suspicious, if he isn't already. It would make him look at her more closely. If he learned about you all, and how important you are to her, he'd use you to try to control her. She's not wrong. I know it's not what you want to hear, but she's not."

She expects them to protest, to argue, but Terry just shuts his eyes briefly and nods once, while Allan looks unhappy but resigned, and she remembers what Terry said the night before, that he and Phi were soldiers, both of them. They must have long experience with accepting distance and danger between them, quietly if not easily. 

"I'm sorry," Quil tells him softly, because it seems like someone ought to.

"You don't need to be sorry, Quil. Thank you for doing this, for all of it. You've given me such a gift."

Allan unfolds himself from where he's sitting, standing easily. "I'm going to go let the others know," he says, dropping a hand down to squeeze Terry's shoulder, then glancing at Quil. "He's right, you know. Thank you."

Quil watches him leave, then turns back to Terry, frowning. "You call it a gift, but you don't look glad to have been given it."

Terry laughs a little, quietly and without much humor. "You are not responsible for my wife's stubbornness, or her sense of duty."

"She'd be in less danger if it weren't for me. If she weren't trying to protect me."

"She's living and working under the nose of a cruel man whose reign she's trying to end. She was in great danger the day she set foot in the palace, and she'd still be in it even if she'd never met you." He leans forward and clasps Quil's arm. "Phi's never been the sort to let danger keep her from doing what she believes is right, and I love her for that. But I married her with my eyes open, knowing the heartache it might bring me. I chose it, because the joy of loving and being loved by her is worth so much more than the price I pay of worrying for her. And because it seemed foolish to me to refuse to have her in my life at all, just to avoid the risk of having her and losing her." He stands up, and uses his hand on Quil's arm to help her to her feet as well, and holds her steady when her hooves threaten to slip on the rock.

"I don't know how you do it," Quil murmurs, hitching the quilt up to wrap more closely around herself without dragging on the ground. "I've only known her a few weeks and I can scarcely breathe I'm so afraid for her."

"Ah, well." Terry scratches a hand through his hair, looking thoughtful. "It helps that I've seen her working, and I know what she's capable of, I imagine. I trust her to be able to keep herself safe, and to make it home to us."

"It's not what she's capable of that worries me. It's what Seath is."

Terry gives a little grunt of wordless acknowledgement and turns his face away to grimace off into the distance. "He's still just a man. A man with a great many resources at his disposal, perhaps, but a man all the same."

Quil jerks her head up and stares at him. Before she can manage to make her voice work, though, he's continued speaking.

"In any case, Iain will send word to Gari this morning, if he hasn't already, and in a few days she should be here, and we can plan for how to finish this with Seath, so Phi can come home for good." He starts towards the cottage, but when Quil doesn't fall into step beside or behind him, he stops just a few strides past and turns back. He frowns at her, and his face is washed with concern. "Quil? Are you all right?"

She has to swallow three times before she can make her voice work. "Sure," she says. "I'm fine."

It only makes the furrow between his brows deepen. He sighs a little and scrubs a hand through his hair before coming back to her. "It's a lot, when you haven't been raised or trained to it the way we were. I'm sorry for that. If there were a way I could make it easier to bear, I would. Do you--" He starts to speak, then stops himself, pressing his lips together and frowning. He waves it off with a sweep of his hand through the air and mutters, "No, never mind."

There's a breeze sighing through the trees and, somewhere in the distance, a chorus of birds chirping, but despite all that the world somehow feels like it's gone still around them, just trees rising around them like pillars and Terry's mouth twisting in a way that Quil doesn't know how to read. "What? What is it?"

He lets his breath out all at once, a great, heaving gust of it, and rubs his face with a hand before he drops it and asks on a rush, "It's just... Do you want a hug? You look like you might need one -- gods, after everything you've been through, of course you'd need one -- and I thought... But, never mind, you hardly even know me and it's not as though we met under the best of circumstances, just forget I--"

"Please," Quil says, the word bursting out of her before she can hold it back, and then she stands there a little stricken, clutching at the quilt and feeling the heat of mortification burn up across her cheeks, worse than any flames her magic could manifest.

Terry pulls himself up short, halfway through turning back to the cottage, and faces her again, his head tipped to the side, his expression uncertain. "What?"

"Please," she says again, and this time her voice wavers on it, threatens to break, and she shuts her eyes and wishes she were strong enough not to beg for something that's been offered and rescinded twice now.

Terry lets out a soft breath, like a sigh, or like a gasp, and his steps crunch across the fallen leaves and sticks on the forest floor, coming closer rather than withdrawing. Quil opens her eyes and startles to see him just before her, looking at her with a little frown gathered between his brows, but she doesn't think it's borne of unhappiness or displeasure. His expression is the tenderest one she's ever seen, and he doesn't say anything, just cups her elbow and gently urges her in, and opens his other arm to make a space for her.

Quil lets out a strangled, hiccuping gasp and steps in. Her hands go to his waist, grabbing great fistfuls of his shirt and holding on like she's drowning and he's the only thing keeping her afloat.

He doesn't flinch or withdraw from her, just slides the hand on her elbow up to the back of her arm and closes the other one around her, urging her in, holding her fast, and Quil presses her face to his chest, just beneath the hollow of his throat, and breathes unsteadily against the coarse weave of his shirt.

"I'm sorry," she whispers without lifting her head.

"Shh, shh, hey." Terry slides the hand on her arm up to curve at the back of her neck instead, a gentle, steady pressure, like he means to hold onto her for as long as she'll let him. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

It just makes her choke on a strangled cry, and Terry holds her through that, too, holds her as the tears that she probably should have shed weeks ago finally catch up to her and overtake her, and she stands in the circle of his arms and holds onto him tight enough that her knuckles ache and weeps into his shirt. He strokes his hand over her hair and just holds onto her, settles her closer when it makes her shoulders shake, and never once acts like he wishes she'd hurry up and finish and let go of him, or like maybe there's something else he'd rather be doing. He just _holds_ her, and it's been so long since anyone did, and the easy, quiet comfort he offers her just makes the tears come faster.

Eventually there's nothing left in her, and she's just standing in Terry's arms with her face pressed to his damp shirt, feeling empty and brittle, as though the slightest touch might make her crumble like ash. But Terry holds her in his arms and strokes her hair and the back of her neck and the side of her face and she doesn't shatter. It makes her feel more whole, not less, and she takes a deep, shuddering breath and lifts her head from his chest.

"Thank you," she says softly, because she knows he'll shrug it off if she tries to apologize again. "I didn't expect..."

He waits for her to finish, but she doesn't have the words, so she just shakes her head and works a hand up between them to scrub the heel of her hand across her cheeks. Terry smiles at her gently and brushes the pad of his thumb just below her eye, drying her other cheek. "You don't have to thank me for that."

"I'm not saying it because I have to, I'm saying it because I'm... I'm glad. You're right, I needed it, and it was a kindness."

If anything, that only makes Terry look unhappy, his mouth pressing flat with a grimace. "There are any number of reasons I'd like to kill Seath," he says after a moment, and his voice is strained. "And right now, this is very far from the bottom of the list."

_That_ makes her draw back, and Terry lets his hands fall away. The morning feels cold again, a fine shiver stealing through her, and she tugs the quilt more securely around her shoulders. "You said-- You're not going to try to kill him again so soon, are you? You've only just healed from being exploded."

"Not just yet, no," he agrees, and lays a hand on her shoulder to guide her back towards the cottage. "There's things yet to do, plans to make, and we'll need Gari here for most of that. There'll be a little time before we're ready to make another move against him." He turns his head as they walk together through the woods, looking at her. "Are you worried about it? You needn't come with us, if you'd rather not. I-- Perhaps you'll take insult at this, but in all honesty, I hadn't planned on you coming with us. You've only just gotten free of him, and if he were to learn you're still alive—"

"—He'd know Phi had lied, I know." She takes a deep breath, filling her lungs with the cool morning air. It steadies her, and Terry's hand on her back steadies her. "Never mind. There's time. Right?"

"There is." He squeezes her shoulder before releasing her, and letting his hand drop to his side. "You've time enough to decide what you'd like to do."

She nods and swallows against the tightness in her throat, and walks with him back to the cottage, and doesn't say that that's not what's troubling her. It's cowardice, she knows, but she's still feeling fragile -- and besides, like Terry said. She has time.

*

There's coffee back at the cottage, and loud, raucous clamoring, everyone wanting to talk at once about the response Phi had given them, that Allan had brought back before Quil and Terry returned. Quil sits with her knees pulled close to her chest, her mug cradled in her hands, and sips at the drink as the conversation whips around her. Kal's grim and wants to tell Phi to come home immediately, before anything can happen to her while she's so far away from the rest of them, and Allan cautions that they need to wait for Gari to come, and hear what she has to say, which most of the group seems to agree with, if not entirely gladly, but Kal and Lanra both seem mutinous about it. Quil holds her tongue through it all and lets them work it out amongst themselves, until Iain lifts his voice to speak over all of them and says, "Well, either way, it seems like we're going to be in need of some more healing potions. Quil? Will you come help me tend the flowers?"

She looks up at him, startled, but then nods. "If you like," she says, and unfolds to stand and follow him outside, to their little garden patch where the shoots they'd planted and grown the day before are unfurled, reaching tender leaves towards the sun overhead.

"I'm not sure how I can help," she admits when it's just the two of them, and Iain has knelt down in the turned earth to brush a careful, reverent touch across the newly-budded flowers. "I don't know how to do your kind of magic."

He glances up at her long enough to give her a smile before returning his attention to the flowers. "I'm glad to have your company all the same. And you can help me take clippings, once they've grown enough that they can tolerate it." He pushes his fingers into the earth and sinks his magic into it. Quil can feel it, warm like the summer sun, and the flowers stretch and grow in response, buds erupting into blossoms before her eyes until the garden is a riot of color, vibrant flower petals glowing like jewels in the dappled sunlight.

Iain spends perhaps an hour or more coaxing the flowers up into a proper garden, and Quil sits with him through it and marvels at the work he does. With his direction, she helps to trim the growing plants to encourage them to branch and grow more blossoms, and by the time he straightens up and pats down the earth that he'd disturbed by plunging his hand into it, the garden is lush and full and Quil's skirt has a small heap of trimmings on it, flowers and branches and leaves combined. She twists one of the stems between her fingers, making the flower at its head spin and cast up its delicate fragrance into the air around them, and she considers the golden powder dusting her fingertips and asks, "Is it the flowers that make the healing potions work, or the pollen, or the magic?"

Iain considers the question a moment, his head tipped to the side. "A little of all three, I suppose. Why do you ask?"

She rubs the pads of her fingers together and then shows them to him. "I was just wondering, if it's the pollen, or the nectar, if adding honey made from the right flowers to the potions might help it work stronger, or faster, or..." She lifts one shoulder in a shrug. "More."

Iain takes her by the wrist, fingers carefully wrapped around her, and frowns thoughtfully at her hand and the pollen dusted across it. "It's not a bad idea." His words are guarded but there's a simmering excitement brewing in his voice that makes Quil's pulse kick up in answer to it. " _If_ I could cultivate honey that had only been gathered from our garden, or could forage it and know its source. Perhaps someday, when we're not hiding out here the way we are, when we'd have space and time to devote to a few hives--"

"I could help," she says on a rush, then sucks air through her teeth and pulls back. Iain lets her go, and she wipes the pollen from her hands onto a bit of scrubby grass near where she's sitting. "I mean, if you wanted. If it would help with the potions."

Iain's gaze is brighter now, and it's fixed on her. He leans in toward her and his face is alight with interest and eagerness. "Help how, exactly?"

She shrugs, hunching in a little, shrinking under the weight of his attention. "I'm good with bees. I like them, and they like me. I used to keep them, before--" Before Seath learned of what had happened to her, the magic boiling up in her and spilling over, and decided he needed to have it for himself. Before her king had strolled up through her peaceful meadow with a dozen guards at his back, crushing her flowers beneath their careless boots, and told her that her mother had died and, as an orphan, she was to be taken into his custody and under his protection, and had dragged her away from the quiet life she had built for herself. A dozen guards he'd brought for her, and he'd said it was to keep her safe, but it was only when they glanced at her that their hands twitched towards the hilts of their swords, and it was her they kept a wary eye on during the long carriage ride to the palace.

In all the time she'd been at Seath's court, she hadn't let herself wonder what had happened to the hives she'd had to leave behind, whether they were thriving and growing without her there to tend to them, whether they'd swarmed and moved on and found someplace else to call their home.

"Anyway," she says softly, sifting her fingers through the cuttings piled on her lap. "I know how to keep them, and if we had a little hive just here, with all these flowers close by for harvesting, I could convince them not to range farther looking for other sources of pollen, I think."

Iain looks guarded now, cautious. "It's a nice thought. We don't have all summer to wait to be able to harvest a new hive, though."

"It doesn't take a summer to turn nectar into honey. It only takes that long for a hive to fill their comb, and make enough to be worth the effort of harvesting, for a beekeeper. If we established a hive now, they could have their first stores of honey capped in a week, maybe less if it stays warm. We wouldn't be able to take very much at a time, but we _could_ start harvesting it then, if you didn't need very much. How much do you think it'd take, for your potions?"

"Not much. Whatever we had would be an aid." Iain shakes his head slowly, marveling. "You could _do_ that? You could have a hive established and producing honey, inside of a week?"

"I could try," she says. "Should I?"

"You can do whatever you like, of course.  I'm not going to tell you otherwise. But if you happened to have some honey to put in the potions, by the time they were ready to be bottled, I'd be glad to have it, and to try it."

"And it'd help?" She grips too tight on the flower she's been spinning and the stem crushes between her fingers, staining them faintly green and releasing the sharp, clean smell of fresh, growing things. She lays it down with the rest of the cuttings on her lap with a grimace. "With the potions? It'd make them better?"

Iain shrugs helplessly, but he's smiling, grinning with an excitement that she can already feel bubbling up within her own chest. "I couldn't say until we tried. But it'd be worth the trying, if we had the materials on hand."

She folds her legs under her so she can more easily get to her feet, holding the cuttings scooped up her skirt like a makeshift basket. "Then I'll take a walk," she says with a decisive nod. "And see if I can find any hives that seem like they could be coaxed into swarming. Where would you like these, in the meantime?"

Iain directs her where to leave them, and when she's done she brushes her hands and her skirt off, and then sweeps her magic through to finish the job of cleaning up. And then she ducks her head inside the cottage, blinking at the change from the bright daylight outside to the dimness of the fire and lantern light within.

Terry and Kal are there, their heads bent in conversation over a piece of parchment that they're scribbling on, and they both glance up when she comes inside.

"Do you have a box you could spare?" she asks Terry. "Something sturdy, but light enough to be carried?"

He blinks at her a moment, then sets down his pen and says a quiet word to Kal before rising and stepping away. "I'm sure I could find something. How big do you need?"

She holds her hands up, about a foot apart. "About like so. Not too much smaller, but bigger would be all right, if it's not too heavy."

He looks baffled, but gamely looks about the cottage, eyes narrowed in thought, before he crouches and draws the mending basket out from beneath his bed, and then from behind that a small wooden chest with a lid, which he opens and starts rifling through the contents, finding other places around the room for this bit here or that bit there, until the box is empty and he brings it over to her. "Will this suit?"

She takes it from him, hefts it to test the weight, and considers the size. It's perhaps a little on the small side, if she were to find a sizeable swarm, but it's light and could be easily tucked under her arm to carry, and so she nods and smiles her thanks at him. "I'll have it back to you tomorrow, with any luck."

"There's no rush." Warm, glad laughter colors his voice, and his eyes dance with it as he hands the box off to her. "Will you tell me what it's for, or is it a secret?"

"I'm catching bees," she tells him, and is expecting the way shock washes across his face, though not how quickly the brightness rises up again from underneath it. Even Kal has turned to watch them, and she's getting better at reading dragonborn expressions now, and she thinks it's surprise that she sees there. "Well, with any luck, I am. I'm helping Iain," she adds, though she knows it's foolish to feel defensive about it.

"Do you want company?"

She blinks at him, taken aback, then frowns a little. "Are you going to get scared by a swarm of bees? Because if you are, then no."

A smile flirts with the corners of Terry's mouth. "I'll try to restrain myself," he says, dry and amused. "If you'll have me along. You won't hurt my feelings, if you don't want the company."

"You can come," she says after a moment. He doesn't seem the sort to lose his composure over a few bees, even a sizeable swarm of them, and they'll be able to cover more ground with the two of them, and have better odds of finding a swarm. 

And it'll be a pleasant change, she thinks, to be able to do this with company. It was a quiet, peaceful life that she led in her cottage on the meadow, and she'd have far rather been there than in Seath's court, but it was a lonely one, too, after having grown up in her mother's house, with her sister's companionship. It'll be good to have someone besides the bees for company, while she works with them.

"Are you ready?" she asks him.

He glances at Kal, murmurs, "If you don't mind picking this up later?" and, at Kal's indulgent smile and nod, turns back to Quil. "I'm ready."

She nods once and leads the way outside, box tucked under her arm. Just outside the cottage, Iain catches her eye and waves her over to where he's sitting, cross-legged in the dirt just beside his garden. "I can help you, I think. I didn't want to do it earlier, because I know these things move quickly, when they're happening. But if you're ready now, I can tell you where to find bees." He chews on the corner of his lip, eyes narrowed in thought. "I can't promise they'll be swarming, or ripe to swarm. But I can at least tell you where to find them."

"Please, by all means. I'll be glad for any assistance."

Iain nods once, glances past her to Terry, and nods again, then adjusts how he's sitting, presses his palms flat to the earth on either side of himself, and shuts his eyes. Quil can feel his magic spreading through the ground just as it had before with the flowers, though this time it spreads farther, branches and thins and branches again, reaching into the distance until she can't see where it ends. And when Iain opens his eyes, he's got a distant look, and he stares past her as though without seeing her at all. 

"A little over two miles southwest," Iain says, his voice soft and dreamy. "It's the nearest hive to where we are right now."

"There's a clearing near to there, I think," Terry says, more to Quil than to Iain. "If I'm remembering correctly. It'd be a good place for flowers to grow, and for bees to harvest."

Quil nods once, considers the sun overhead, and the distance that lies before them. "We'll need to hurry. If there's a swarm, they'll settle down by evening, and we'll have a harder time finding them."

Terry smiles at her. "We'll move quickly, then."

Iain blinks a few times, shakes his head and pulls his hands from the dirt and wipes them off. "Good luck," he calls after them, as Quil catches Terry's hand and leads him off, into the trees to the southwest. 

They move quickly and quietly, the only sound that of their breathing and twigs snapping underfoot, as Quil listens for the droning hum of a hive or a swarm. Terry keeps pace with her easily and seems to understand that she's straining her ears for the faintest buzz of bees, because he doesn't speak except occasionally, and then softly, to catch Quil's attention when he's found a faster way around an obstacle that lies on their path, or to ask her if she's all right when her hoof slips on a patch of mud and sends her crashing to her knees, swearing beneath her breath. Once, she ducks under a low-hanging branch but misjudges the distance, and doesn't duck far enough, and the branch catches in her hair and tangles on the curl of her horn, and Terry ducks his head and laughs quietly, then moves forward and stays her hands with his when she tries to reach up and yank it free.

"You'll only make it worse," he murmurs, and reaches up with steady hands to carefully begin untangling strands of hair from where they've wrapped around the branch. "And you'll take half your hair with it if you try to just tear it free."

She stays very still, and he stands very close to her so he can see what he's doing and what sort of a mess her hair has knotted itself up into. And in a few moments, he lets the last strands of hair fall to hang loose against her shoulder, and then works the branch free from her horn and holds it up out of the way for her, gesturing her back into the lead with a smile and a sweep of his hand.

They're nearly there by Quil's reckoning, have traveled perhaps a mile and a half or so, perhaps a little more, when a whining hum darts past Quil's ear and she freezes where she stands, one hand thrown out to stop Terry, and she scans the sky until she sees it, a small, dark silhouette against the clouds overhead, and she dashes forward as it flies off, straining to keep sight of it. 

There are flowers nearby, small clusters of them growing at the base of trees or crawling up the moss-covered sides of fallen logs, but the bee doesn't fly over to them to harvest nectar or even to investigate, and it isn't flying a direct-enough path to be making her way back to her hive, either. Quil scarcely dares breathe with excitement and hope as she follows the bee, clambering over boulders and pushing through thickets to keep it in her sight, and it's not long before she hears and sees a few more bees, buzzing past, and there's a distant, growing hum that makes her look back to Terry, beaming brightly, and say, "I think we might have gotten very, very lucky."

He returns her smile with his own, bemused one. "Are you sure? They sound angry."

"They're not." She hitches her skirts up and continues forward, toward the sound of the bees. "They're swarming."

The hum of the swarm grows louder and louder as they get closer to it, until it's practically a roar and there are hundreds of bees, thousands of them zipping around, filling the air and the sky. Terry hangs back, looking discomfited if not quite afraid, but Quil just breathes out a long, long breath and strides right into the middle of them, stands in the center of the swarm and feels the light, prickling touch of the bees as a few land on her arms or her neck and crawl across her skin before taking off again, and she tips her face up to the bee-clouded sky above her and laughs and laughs, feeling more effervescent with joy than she has in years.

Eventually, perhaps emboldened by her laughter or the obvious fact that she hasn't been stung, Terry makes his way to her side and stands with her, very obviously trying not to flinch as bees buzz past him. 

"They'll settle down soon," she tells him. "Once the queen does. She won't be able to fly very far without resting, so it shouldn't be long now."

Terry lifts his arm, watching with an uncertain expression as a bee lands on the back of his wrist and picks her way through the hairs there. "Why aren't they stinging?"

"We haven't given them a reason to." He still seems uncomfortable, if not outright afraid, so she lays her hand on his arm and lets the bee crawl up onto and between her fingers, and lifts it off of him. The bee climbs up to her fingertip, rests there a moment, fluttering its wings, and then takes off to rejoin the rest of the swarm. Quil watches her go, until she can't make her out between the rest of her sisters.

When she looks at Terry again, he's watching her with an expression she can't place, but that makes something warm and thick as honey spread through her. "You're fearless," he says, and his voice is full of reverent awe. "You're incredible."

She frowns a little and ducks her head as a blush heats her cheeks. "There's nothing to fear from bees. They're very docile, particularly when they're swarming."

Terry's lips quirk with a tenuous, charmed smile. "I have a scar on my heel from when I was eleven that would say otherwise."

Quil huffs out a breath of laughter. "You can hardly blame the bees for that." The swarm is moving, drifting away from them, and she steps through the trees to move with it, to stay in the middle of it. When she turns back, Terry has followed her, is still just a few strides away, is still watching her with that same tender expression. "Wouldn't you fight back," she asks, "if someone stepped on you?"

He looks startled, and then grins, chagrined. "You know, when you put it that way, I suppose I would."

And she knows he's not talking about the bees anymore, not really. He's talking about the group of them, a tight-knit family that's ready to rise up and defend itself against a threat. He's talking about sneaking into the palace at night, dressed all in black, nothing but determination and a knife gripped in his hand to fight back with, as effective as a bee's sting against someone like Seath, but willing to risk his life to defend his home. But _that_ thought makes her chest feel tight, makes it hard to breathe, and so she pushes it aside and keeps her attention on the bees, on the mass of them that she can see growing on a thankfully low-hanging branch of a tree not far off.

There's still plenty of bees zipping through the air, but that's to be expected. They won't all settle down until evening comes, and the growing dark sends them back to rejoin the safety of the colony. But there's enough of them gathered on the branch, weighing it down, that the queen _must_ be with them, protected in the very middle of the mass. 

She opens the box Terry had given her and sets it on the ground at the foot of the tree, then reaches with both hands together and cups underneath the swarm, scoops it up carefully and marvels at the weight of the bees in her palms, the warmth of them, the soft fluttering of wings beating against her skin as the swarm shifts and settles. 

She crouches, lowering them carefully to the box, and tips her hands down to let them crawl off of her and into the shelter of the box themselves. A few try to climb up her arms, instead of down, but she shoos them back the right direction and then stands, giddy with joy, as a few stragglers climb over her hands and tickle across her skin. One of them takes off from a knuckle, buzzes about her head and then lands on the point of her horn, close enough by her ear that she can hear the soft, steady hum of its wings.

"Go on," she murmurs, offering it a knuckle to climb onto, and then lowers it to the box, where it eagerly rejoins the others. "Back to your queen now. She's going to need you."

She lowers herself to the ground, sitting cross-legged next to the box and watches as those of the swarm left behind begin to crawl down the trunk of the tree. A thin branch laid across the box, its end against the tree, gives them an easy path to rejoin the rest of the colony. 

"It's good," she says, gesturing to the dark mass of bees slowly crawling their way down the bark. "It means we got the queen. They'll go wherever she is." 

Terry makes a sound in response, noncommittal, and she glances towards him to see what's wrong, only to find that he's watching her with that same soft, open expression of quiet awe that he had when he'd called her incredible. "I've never seen anything like that," he tells her, earnest. 

She scoffs a little, unconvinced, and moves to the side to make room for him beside her, if he wants to come and sit. "You've seen me do magic, and Iain and Allan, I'm sure. This isn't anything like that. It isn't magic, it's just knowing bees."

"I have seen Iain and Allan do magic," he agrees, and steps carefully around the box to take the place she's made for him. "I've never seen _anyone_ do anything like that."

"Well," she says. "You need to spend time with more beekeepers."

His laughter is soft and warm and fills her with the same sort of gladness that holding the bees in her hands had. "I think you might be right." He leans back, hands braced on the ground behind him, looking at ease as they watch the bees rejoin their queen. "Will they all just put themselves into the box like that?"

"As long as the queen's there, they will. They'll have some out scouting, looking for a good place to establish a new hive, and they might not come back until dusk. We should wait until then to close it up and take it back. If we move the colony from where they'd last left it, they won't be able to find it again, and they won't survive long on their own without the hive."

"I'm not in any hurry," he says easily, and they sit in companionable silence and watch as evening falls, and the swarm regathers itself within the box.

When it's dark and the hive has settled, and she hasn't seen any more bees fly back to rejoin the hive in a while, Quil leans forward and brushes a few wandering bees back inside the box, where they won't be left behind, or crushed when she closes the lid, and then she latches it shut and lifts it onto her lap carefully, and smiles her thanks when Terry offers her a hand to help her to her feet.

She leads the way back to the cottage, holding on to Terry's sleeve to help guide him through the darkness that his human eyes can't see past. It's still slow going as Terry picks his way cautiously along with her, careful of where he places every step, and it's well past evening and into night properly by the time they glimpse the cottage through the trees, warm golden light glowing from the windows and guiding them home.

Terry goes to the house directly, once they're close enough that the light through the windows is enough for him to see by, and Quil stops by Iain's garden to set down the box with their swarm before following him inside. She finds everyone still up, looking bleary-eyed and with expressions all somewhere in the midst of the transformation from concern to relief. Kal's at the fire, filling two plates with what looks like what's left of a braised rabbit, and he gives one to Terry before bringing the other over to Quil with a smile. 

"We figured you'd be hungry when you got back," he says as he hands her the plate, and doesn't say what they must have all been thinking, that they'd worried that they might not come back at all. Quil would have, if the situation had been reversed. 

"Thank you," she tells him earnestly, and brushes a touch over his arm before taking the plate from him. "I'm sorry if we worried you. It's not a quick business, catching a swarm." Not for those who cared about making sure none of the bees got left behind, in any case.

"I made something for you while you were out," Iain says, and unfolds from where he's been sitting on the bed to gesture her to it, into the place where she's often taken to sitting when they all crowd into the cottage to eat together, cross-legged at the foot of the bed. His face is glowing with happiness and anticipation. "I'll show you in the morning, when there's enough light to see by."

"You didn't have to," she says, and isn't sure herself if she means moving for her or making something for her. But it doesn't matter because Iain waves her protests off all the same and sits on the floor with Kal, leaning back against him and looking as pleased as though he'd managed to snag the most comfortable seat in the house.

She eats quickly, too hungry from the long day and the long walk to do otherwise, and Terry leans back against the headboard in his own usual spot beside her and does the same, and as they eat the others move around the cottage, laying out blankets and settling down to sleep, now that they've seen for herself that she and Terry are home safe.

Quil looks out over them as she finishes her supper, the patchwork sea of blankets that the floor's been transformed into, and marvels at how these people, who all have homes of their own not too far away, nevertheless stay and sleep on the floor without a word of complaint, all to be close to Terry, who so recently had them so terribly worried. The care and love filling the cottage is as bright as the fire's glow, as tangible as magic, and she doesn't know how she got lucky enough to be allowed even to sit on its edges and bask in its warmth.


	2. Part Two

As soon as there's enough light to see by in the morning, she rises with the blanket wrapped around her. Terry stirs again, as he had the morning before, and lifts his head to frown at her through bleary eyes. "It's early," he says, half-mumbled into his pillow. "And we were out late. Sleep a while longer."

She smiles at him, but this time shakes her head instead of letting herself be coaxed back to bed. "I have to check on my bees."

He makes an inarticulate sound that she thinks might be protest, but his frown clears and he doesn't try to stop her as she picks her way between the rest of the sleeping forms on the floor and lets herself out into the cool dawn, where the sun is just starting to slant through the trees and the perfume from Iain's garden is rich on the air.

She can hear the bees buzzing, and it's such a familiar, comforting sound that her heart lurches in her chest. She hurries to the garden and crouches beside the box where she'd left it, brushes her fingers over the lid and murmurs, "Sorry, girls. Let me find you a home first and I'll let you out."

And then she sees what she hadn't in the dark the night before, a young bush that hadn't been there when she'd helped Iain with the garden, grown out of the ground just beside it and its branches coaxed to weave together as they grew, fashioning an enclosed space with a small opening near the ground that's the perfect size for a small hive, and with pliable enough branches at the top that she can coax them back and see inside.

She opens up a wide enough space to fit the box inside and set it on the bottom of the hive, and then she reaches in and unhooks the latch, opens the box's lid and then retreats, and sits on the ground by the hive to listen and watch as the bees venture out of the box and begin to explore what they'll hopefully decide is their new home. 

Iain finds her there, not too much later, and has a mug of coffee that he presses into her hands before sitting beside her. "I wanted to show you," he says with a wry twist to his mouth. "But you're an early riser."

"I needed to let them out before they grew hungry or distressed." She reaches a hand out and presses it to his, squeezes it gently. "Thank you. It's wonderful." She shifts the small pile of thin, straight twigs that she'd gathered while she watched and listened, setting it between them. "Will you help me make these up?" She shows him how she's tying them together in pairs, crossed  to make a simple framework. "It'll give them something to build their comb on, and make harvesting easier and less disruptive to the hive."

He nods and takes up two of the twigs from the pile, watches her as she demonstrates again how to tie them in such a way that they'll hold steady and stay strong, and then sets to work beside her, his glad company and easy conversation and the hum of the occasional bee as they start to venture out and explore making for one of the nicest mornings she can remember having in a long while.

Once they've finished, Iain helps her to hold back the branches at the top of the hive so she can place the stick frames inside, and she whispers an apology for disturbing them again so soon, then sits with her coffee, cradling the still-warm mug in her hands, and watches the bees flit about and discover the garden, crawling across flower heads that bob and sway beneath their slight weight. She feels settled in her own skin in a way that she rarely does, her magic peaceful and content, enough that she dares to take up a thread and try to shape it, even with Iain sitting on one side of her and the bees on the other.

She could cast it to the west, towards Phi, but what is there for her to say just yet? She can't think of anything that wouldn't be inane in the face of all the things her siblings and her husband surely want to say to her. She can wait, and see if there are any messages that anyone else would like her to pass on later.

And so she takes the strand of magic and twists it idly, contemplatively, and finds herself thinking about the pages Allan had shown her in his book, the spell that he'd said would provide protection. The incantations and movements he'd taught her had done little for her then, but this morning her magic feels pliable and cooperative, and she sets aside thoughts of words and gestures and just thinks instead about the feeling that she'd gotten from reading the spell, the sense of a cage of magic forged around her, and it's easy to bend her magic into that shape until she can feel it encircling her, and when her magic breaks free from the shape that it's formed and settles back within her, the shape remains, glowing steady and stable against her mind's eye.

She gives a soft cry of surprise and opens her eyes to find Iain watching her, smiling faintly. "That's a clever one," he says when he sees he has her attention. "Did Allan teach it to you?"

"Sort of," she says. "He tried to teach me from his spellbook the other day but it didn't work. This is... new."

Iain hums a little, thoughtfully. "Allan's got a real knack for learning new spells from books," he says. "Me, though? My magic doesn't work that way. It never has, and I doubt it ever would, no matter how much time I spent frowning over books or scrolls." He shrugs with one shoulder. "Magic works that way for some people. For others, it doesn't. You won't do yourself any favors trying to force it to work it a way it isn't inclined to."

She frowns a little, turning the cup about in her hands and watching the coffee that's left within it slosh from side to side. "How am I supposed to learn more, though? I've had it in me for ages, but it's never been any real use until recently. I want to be able to do more with it than just talk to someone, a little bit, or clean my dress off, or, or shoot a bird out of the air."

"It seems to me, the way you've learned what you have is by trying things, by using it and seeing what works."

Quil takes a long, deep breath, holds it until her chest starts to ache and then lets it out slowly. Her tail lashes through the grass beside her, until Iain glances at it and she pulls it in close, wraps it tight around her ankle to squeeze there and keep still. "Using it is usually where the trouble starts, for me."

For several minutes, there's quiet between them, just the humming of the bees and the whisper of the wind through the trees. When Iain speaks again, he does so quietly, and he's looking at the garden, instead of at her. "You set off a firestorm to try to protect Terry, even though you expected that you'd be consumed by the flames. You've done so many incredible things even just in the time I've known you, and you've done it all knowing that it carries the risk of setting fire to the air around you once again." Now he looks at her, and his gaze holds her pinned in place. "You're not the sort to turn from something just because it's dangerous. I may not have known you long, but I know you well enough to say that."

Quil frowns, drains the last of the coffee from her cup and then sets it on the ground at her side so she can twist her fingers together. "Maybe," she allows, the closest she can come to bringing herself to agree with Iain, because she doesn't _feel_ like the person he's describing. That person sounds like someone who's brave, and if she were brave, wouldn't she have stood up to Seath even once in the time she'd lived in his palace, told him that she wouldn't do what he wanted instead of lying and misdirecting and letting him think that she couldn't? Wouldn't she have run, any one of those nights with Phi, when she'd had the opportunity? "Maybe I'm not the sort to turn away. But that doesn't mean I'm not afraid of it."

Iain's expression, when she can bring herself to look at him, has gone soft with sympathy. "That doesn't make you less brave, Quil. If anything, it makes you more." He reaches out and frees one of her hands from where she has them clasped together in her lap, covers it with his and gives it a squeeze. "You don't have to if you don't want to, of course. No one here will try to force your hand, and I hope you haven't felt that we were expecting it of you. But we can help and support you, if you do. You're not in this alone anymore, if you don't want to be."

Quil's breath shudders through her lungs, wet and thick. She turns her hand over in Iain's and squeezes back before slipping it out of his grasp and wrapping both arms around her knees, hugging them to her chest. "I don't know," she says, and her voice sounds small and scared, even to her own ears. "I'll think about it."

In the very edges of her vision, he nods easily, like he really does mean it, like he'd accept it perfectly well if she never did any magic more helpful than this one, a cage to hide in, to keep herself safe. "Do you want company while you think? Or would you rather be alone?"

"You don't have to stay." She leans her chin on her knee and watches as a bee buzzes over to her from the garden. It lands on her skirt and begins to explore, wandering up to her hand and crawling over her knuckles. "I'm fine. I just want to watch them for a bit, make sure they're getting settled and not feeling inclined to swarm again."

He nods again. "I'll leave you to it, then." He gets to his feet, then stands beside her for a moment longer, looking down at her. "But you can always come get me, if you'd like to. Or any one of us."

"Thank you, Iain," she says softly, and turns her hand over as the bee crawls along the edge of her hand, so it won't have to cling upside down to her palm.

He nods and clasps her shoulder briefly before he leaves her, going back into the cottage. She sits in the quiet of the morning, the sun warm where it lands on her face, the gentle prickle of the bee's legs across her skin as it crawls over her hand and up her arm. A few of its sisters come over to join them, one landing on her shoulder, the other on her head, where it tickles as it crawls across her hair. Most of the others are exploring the flowers in the garden, gathering nectar and pollen and bringing it back to the hive, but a few stay with her, and when they fly off to return to their work, it's not long before others come to take their place.

She's aware, distantly, of people stirring and moving, waking up and beginning their work for the day. The cottage door opens and closes sporadically as people come and go, but for the most part, they leave her undisturbed with the flowers and the bees. The sun's higher and the air warmer when the cottage door creaks on its hinges and then, a moment later, someone settles down in the grass beside her. She turns, glancing sidelong, and it's Terry there, settled closer to her than Iain had been, close enough that he can lean in just a little bit and press his shoulder to hers. 

"Did Iain send you?"

He smiles a little, but there's a flash of something that looks enough like chagrin that she thinks maybe he did, or maybe he just told Terry enough to make him want to come check in on her. "I wanted to see how yesterday's work is paying off. Are they getting settled in well?"

She lets him deflect, lets him change the subject. "Did he tell you what he made for them?" She gestures to the hive. "They seem to like it. I don't think they're going to go scouting for anywhere else to settle."

He glances sidelong at her, then does a doubletake, and his smile widens into a grin. "I don't think the hive's the only thing they've taken a shine to." He gestures to her, towards the side of her head. "You've got stowaways."

"Hmm?" She reaches a hand up and feels carefully across her hair, until her fingers brush the soft, furry body of a bee that's tucked itself up into the curl of her horn. She holds her hand there until it climbs up and clings to a finger, and then she brings her hand lower so she can see it, and beam at it helplessly. "My bees at home used to do that sometimes, especially when I was tending to my garden. It gave them a chance to rest, while I carried them about to other flowers."

She holds her other hand out to Terry, and he glances at her and only hesitates a moment before he places his into it, his palm pressed to hers. She holds it level and brings her other hand over to it, pressed against the side of his palm and her fingers curled so that when the bee walks forward, it moves from her hand to the back of his.

He watches the bee crawl across his hand, her little antennae waving, as though Quil has somehow made him capable of performing miracles. 

"She'll die if she stings you," Quil says. "So she's not going to unless you give her a reason that she thinks is worth sacrificing her life for. There's no reason to be afraid."

"I'm not afraid, exactly." There's a thread of tension in his voice that belies the words. "Nervous, maybe. That bee when I was eleven made an impression that's hard to shake."

She huffs out a little breath, not quite laughter. "Well, it's better than afraid, at least, I suppose. You can give her back, if you want."

He hums a little noise like he's considering it, but doesn't move to let her take the bee back from him, just keeps turning his hand about as it climbs around, so that it always stays on top. 

Quil watches them for a while, until the bee flies off to one of the flowers in the garden. Not long after, another comes over to investigate them, buzzes a circle around Quil's head, and then lands on her arm. "It's all that red, isn't it?" she asks, laughing, and brushes it down towards her hand so it doesn't get caught in her sleeve. "You must think I'm the biggest flower you've ever seen. Sorry to disappoint you."

"I doubt you're doing anything of the sort."

The bee climbs on top of her sleeve, rather than under it, and begins to climb up toward her shoulder. She watches its steady, determined progress. "There's a tradition, you know. Whenever something momentous happens in the household, you have to tell the bees. If someone passes away and you don't tell them, so they can mourn with the rest of the family, they might leave, or stop making honey. If someone gets married, you have to decorate the hive, and invite them to the wedding, and bring them a piece of the wedding cake, and then you have to bring your new spouse by to introduce the bees to them right away, or they might take insult and fly off, too." The bee reaches the top of her shoulder, where a strand of her hair is hanging over it, and investigates it for a moment before starting to climb up that, too. Quil reaches up and gives it a finger to climb down onto, before it gets tangled in her hair. "I never did have anything to tell my bees about, while I was keeping them. But I like the tradition all the same." She blows gently on the bee until it takes off and flies back to the hive. "It's because they're family. You raise them and care for them and worry about them. You hope they thrive and mourn when they don't. They're family as much as anyone else is, in that."

"And you don't need to fear family?" Terry watches her sidelong, at ease beside her. More at ease than he'd been in the middle of the swarm the day before, despite what he'd said about being nervous. 

"Well. I'm sure there are people out there with terrible families who would disagree. But for the most part. The kind of family that's worth keeping, anyway. Family can hurt you same as bees can, if you give them a reason to lash out, but they won't if you're gentle with each other. And there's little enough cause to fear something that you've committed yourself to sheltering and caring for."

"And if they do sting you? By accident, or because you scared them unintentionally? What then? Do you forgive them?"

She exhales sharply through her nose, her mouth pinching. "There's nothing to forgive. It's just who they are. If you decide to care for bees, you go into it knowing you might get stung. That you probably will. I've been stung before, and it always made me sad. I hurt for, what, a few hours? A few days? But the bee's going to die. I never want them to suffer."

Terry nods like she's answered something. "I need to get some things ready before Gari gets here," he says, getting to his feet. "There's porridge on the fire still, though, if you decide you want some breakfast at some point."

She thanks him, and watches him leave, and then goes back to watching her bees, flitting about and wasting no time at settling themselves into this new life that she brought them to.

Gari arrives in the late afternoon, heralded by a clamor of excited voices and laughter. Quil comes out of the cottage with the rest of the family, hanging back to stay behind them as they rush forward to envelop a dark-haired woman who Quil scarcely gets a glimpse of before she's lost in the press of everyone trying to hug her at once. Quil can hear her laugh, though, bright and high like music, and her voice rises over the others as she says, "All right, all right. You'll all have a chance for your turn at me, but let me get inside and off my feet."

The crowd splits, making space for her, and Quil gets her first glimpse of a human woman, her hair pulled back in a thick plait, with a sturdy leather jerkin and the bent neck of a lute curving over her shoulder. She's reaching out to clasp the hands and shoulders of her siblings as they reach for her, half-turning to answer questions or exchange greetings, and so she's nearly at the step of the cottage when she notices Quil, and her steps hesitate. She smiles at Quil, but it's not as broad or as bright as the smiles she gave her brothers, and there's a question in it, and in her eyes.

"Iain," she says, her voice pitched back lightly towards him. "You didn't tell me we had a visitor, when you said I should come."

"I had only so many words to work with, and too much to tell," Iain says, wry. "Besides, she's not a visitor, not exactly. Phi sent her to us."

The woman's whole face brightens in a way that's starting to grow familiar. "Phi? You've seen her recently, then? How is she?"

Quil considers her answer for a moment. "She keeps saying she's fine."

Gari accepts that with a nod. "Then she is," she says, sure. "As much as she can be, given the situation she's in. She won't lie just to ease our minds."

Quil's not sure of that, not sure that Phi wouldn't carefully choose which portions of the truth she tells in order to keep Quil from taking responsibility for the danger that she's in, or trying to save her from it. But she hasn't known Phi anywhere near as long or as well as the rest of them, and maybe she's wrong. Maybe Phi _would_ tell her if she was in true danger, even knowing that it would send Quil and the rest of her family racing back to the palace to save her from it. She's not going to argue it with Phi's own sister, in any case.

Instead, she comes down off the step of the cottage and, giving Gari one more considering glance, takes a chance: she says, "My name is Quil," and dips into a formal curtsy.

When she straightens from it, Gari is blinking at her, startled, but with a crooked smile. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Gariel, but please call me Gari," she says, and then curtsies back, as much of one as she's able to perform in trousers rather than a dress.

It's not quite the style of curtsy that's the fashion in Seath's court, but it's entirely, perfectly correct, and Quil wraps her arms around her middle and says, too abrupt, too close to accusing, "You're a lady."

Gari laughs at that, thankfully. "I think I can hardly call myself that, these days. For now, I'm just Gari, a traveling bard." She shrugs her shoulder, shifting her lute on her back. Its neck bobs and sways over her shoulder. "It's very good to meet you, Quil." Gari's gaze fixes on her, and there's a light in her eyes that mirrors the brightness on her face. "But, you've spoken with Phi, then? Recently?"

"Quil knows Sending," Allan says from towards the back of the group. "So we've been able to be in limited communication with her, the past few days."

"She says she's fine. She says Seath's suspicious, but that he's inclined to be so anyway."

_That_ makes Gari's gaze swing back to Quil and now it's sharp, pinning. "Suspicious? Of us?

Quil shakes her head slowly. "Of Phi. Of what she did for me." She takes a deep breath and lets it out carefully, then moves aside, clearing the way to the cottage door. "You've had a long way to walk, it sounds like, and you did ask to get off your feet. You'd better come inside and get settled, and I'll tell this story again."

Gari looks like she'd grab at Quil's words and yank them out of her if she could, like she'd like to have the story right now, standing on the steps of the cottage, so as not to have to wait a moment longer than necessary. But she's a lady, whether she thinks she ought to be called so or not, and she's learned the same lessons that Quil did in Seath's court, and so she squares her shoulders and nods once, accepting, and Quil lets her precede them all inside.

*

Gari is quiet for a long moment once Quil's done telling, once again, about everything that transpired between her and Seath and Phi. "I see what you mean," she says at last, "about worrying about him being suspicious of her, and what she's done."

"She's not wrong, about Seath being suspicious by nature," Quil admits, but it feels like a very thin thread to hang their hopes from.

"No. I'd had that impression of him as well." She's quiet a moment, contemplative, and then she looks about the room, at the faces of her brothers around her, and takes a deep breath, and then smiles when she lets it out. "Well. Have you all been squashing yourselves in here together to sleep every night? We'd better get to work, then, so we can get everyone back to their homes and their own beds, before you all break your backs trying to sleep on the floor."

"It seemed the better option, over making everyone walk back and forth between us every other day," Kal says with a grin. "And we've slept on worse."

Gari acknowledges that with a tip of her head. "Nevertheless. We'll gain nothing by waiting, and there's too much we risk losing."

"I've got flowers growing to make another batch of healing potions," Iain says from where he's sitting cross-legged, leaning in against Kal's side with one arm wrapped around his back, and Kal's arm across his shoulder. "But I think I'll have to grow a new patch to harvest, because Quil's got bees whose honey we're hoping will help to fortify the potions. But they'll need those flowers, and I wouldn't want to come through and harvest them all out from underneath them. That'll take a few days. Quil said perhaps a week, before there's any honey made worth harvesting."

Quil watches as Gari's mouth pinches a little at that, her brows lowering, but she nods once. "Well, we'll have to pack a little tighter, then, and hope our backs last. But a week will give us time to refine our plan, at least."

And Quil stares at her, a sinking, terrible sensation in the pit of her stomach, made all the worse by the certainty that she could have seen this coming, she _should_ have, but she'd been so sure it was impossible, impractical, that she'd dismissed the possibility of it from her mind every time any quiet, nagging worry arose. "You mean to move on Seath soon," she says, the words bursting from her, too much to hold back any longer. "In a week? You _can't._ "

Gari glances at her, as do most of everybody else. She lifts her brows a little, says gently, "We've been planning this for far longer. As I said, there's little to gain by waiting, and much to lose--"

Quil laughs, wildly, desperately, and presses her face into her hands. "Oh, you're wrong. You're so wrong. You'll lose everything."

There's perfect, unbroken silence around her, and then Gari speaks. "Perhaps you'd better tell us why that is."

It takes her a moment to be able to make herself draw a few deep, steadying breaths, and lift her head, and face everyone who's watching her, and say what she must. She looks around the faces of these people she's come to tentatively hope she might consider friends, all of them watching her and waiting, and she stops when she comes to Terry, holds on him and says, "I'm sorry. Phi said to tell you everything and I-- I didn't. I didn't think you'd believe me, and then I thought-- You were so badly hurt, and so recently, I thought for sure you wouldn't be planning anything so soon. You said there was time and I thought--" She stops and breathes for a moment, scrambling to gather the pieces of her composure even as it begins to crumble around her. She holds Terry's gaze desperately, clings to it like an anchor, the only thing keeping her from being tossed about by the storm of her own emotions. "You never would have been able to kill him," she says, scarcely a whisper, and forces herself to ignore the shifting and murmur of everyone else around them. "Even if I hadn't interrupted you and ruined your plan, you never would have. You'd have failed, and he'd have destroyed you." And Phi would have been there, and had to witness the example that Seath made of her husband, and had to give nothing away. Quil shudders to think of it.

Terry looks troubled, but not insulted. "I am pretty good with a blade," he says, his lips quirking up into a crooked smile. "I'd have had a decent chance of holding my own."

"You'd have tried," Quil tells him. "But you'd have failed. You were never going to be able to kill him with just a dagger." She shudders and wraps her arms about herself tightly, cold despite the warmth of the fire, and of so many bodies pressed in so close to one another. "You said he's just a man, and you're wrong. He's not. He can make himself look like one, but he's not. He's a dragon, and you were never going to be able to kill him at all."

The silence that answers her this time is almost unbearable. They look stunned, and disbelieving, and she knew they would be, she _knew_ it. Why _would_ they believe a claim so extraordinary, that their land is ruled not just by a terrible man, but by a terrible _dragon?_ She wouldn't, in their place. She wouldn't, if she hadn't had just the barest glimpses of it herself, in Seath's rare unguarded moments.

"A _dragon?_ " That's Lanra, the first to recover, and she doesn't hold his question against him. He doesn't sound disbelieving, exactly, more baffled. "How can there be a dragon living in the palace and no one knows? No one's _ever_ known?"

Quil glances at Terry, says softly, "Seath doesn't take prisoners," and sees the impact of her words on his expression. His eyes go wide a little, and he blinks rapidly and then sighs, bringing one hand up to rub across his brow like he's getting a headache. To Lanra, she continues, "He's obviously taken great pains to keep his secret. He's certainly killed anyone who discovered the truth. I'm sure he'd have killed me ages ago if he knew that I knew. If he didn't need to keep me alive until he figured out how to have my power for his own."

"Even dragons can be slain," Gari says, quiet and sure.

Quil looks at everyone around them and watches as the steadiness of Gari's words makes faces harden with resolve or brighten with determination, but all it makes her feel is despair.

Iain's hand touches Quil's knee and she jumps, her tail lashing out, startled. He looks up at her and he's so solemn, so somber, and she hates it. "You can't think that learning that the fate of our sister and our country lies in the grasp of a cruel dragon, instead of just a cruel man, would make us _less_ inclined to act, rather than more."

"I had hoped it might make you a little less quick to throw your lives away," she says, her voice torn and harsh.

Lanra laughs a little, sharp and entirely without mirth. "Then you don't know us half as well as you ought to by now."

"What good will it do any of you to die?"

"No good at all, of course," Lanra says with an easy shrug, like it's a simple matter to consider his death. "But what good will it do anyone if we don't even try?"

Quil presses her lips together and shakes her head hard, fighting off the wave of fear and grief that grips her heart to see all these people gathered around her, people she's grown close to and come to care for over the days she's spent with them, all of them looking determined and ready to throw themselves into Seath's maw. And for what? So they can say they _tried?_ So they can feel like it was for something, even if it accomplishes nothing, improves nothing? Seath will still rule, he'll still be cruel and tyrannical, people will still suffer under him. But they'll be dead. No one will be better off. They'll just be another handful of victims to Seath's name.

"Does Phi know?"

Quil jerks her head up and finds Terry watching her, his expression tight with fear that resonates with her own. "About Seath?"

He nods once, holding her gaze, and she can _see_ the worry there, the quiet fear and desperation, and oh, that's worse.

"I hope not," she answers on a whisper. "For her sake."

"You have to tell her."

Quil jerks back, pressing her shoulders against the back of the chair. "She's safer not knowing. If Seath has even an inkling that she knows the truth of what he is, it won't matter whether he's suspicious about what she might have done for _me_. He'll kill her to protect his secret, even if he fully believes that she's his loyal huntswoman."

"And what if she finds herself with an opportunity, and decides it's worth taking? What if she does what I nearly did, and tries to attack him with a dagger, thinking that he can be killed as any man might, with a blade thrust into his heart? She has to know, Quil. She doesn't know the true danger that she's in, and she has to if she's going to have any chance of getting home safe to us."

Quil presses the heels of her hands hard against her eyes, breathing raggedly. "If I tell her this, and she gives herself away, I'll have as good as killed her."

Hands circle her wrists, gentle but intractable. Terry draws her hands down from her face and she wants to shake him off and curl her arms over her head to keep out the steady, unyielding certainty of his words, but she can't bear to fight him. He kneels before her on one knee, almost holding hands with her, and gazes up and her solemnly, with so much fear and concern in his eyes that she wonders how he doesn't drown under it. "If we don't give her the information she needs to keep herself safe, then we'll have done the same."

Quil swallows hard, even though her throat aches with unshed tears, but she can't manage to speak past the pain of it, the heaviness in her lungs that threatens to suffocate her.

"She's spent all this time lying, every moment of every day," Terry says, "knowing that her life hangs on whether or not she's able to keep people deceived. She's good at this, Quil. It's why she's the one who's doing it. Trust her to be able to do this, too, but please, _please,_ give her the information that she needs in order to come home safe."

Quil takes a shuddering breath, and then another. It doesn't do anything to calm her, but Terry's hands in hers, and his gaze on hers, steady and sure -- those do. She nods once, jerky, and the gratitude and relief that wash across Terry's face make her hate herself for even considering refusing. "Tomorrow," she says firmly, and some of that fierce, shining gladness tarnishes and fades. "I'm not going to tell her something like this without even a preamble to warn her. Not when I can't even know what situation she might be in, or who might be around."

Terry doesn't like it, that much is obvious. But he nods his acceptance, and slips his hands into Quil's and squeezes them. "Thank you."

The laugh that forces its way up out of her is a horrible, wretched thing, harsh and broken. "Don't thank me for this. Not until we know she's going to be able to get out with her life."

He accepts that too, bends forward and presses his brow to Quil's hands, still held in his, as though now that his fear has left him there's nothing remaining to keep him upright. "She's going to be fine. She's smart and strong and she loves us too much to leave us."

Quil frees one hand from his so she can lift it to run it over the back of his head, fingers sifting through his hair, and wonders whether he's trying to convince her of it, or himself. In the end, though, she supposes it doesn't really matter. She doesn't think it's really worked for either of them.

Eventually Terry straightens, and settles sitting beside her instead of kneeling at her feet, but he keeps one of Quil's hands in his and clings to it like a tether, and she can't bring herself to dislodge him. Even with the cottage packed full of them, too many people in danger of being harmed if her magic slips free of her control. So she looks across the room and catches Allan's eye, says softly, "Be ready, in case this goes wrong," and waits only for his nod of understanding before she grasps at the well of magic within her, pulls out a thread and casts it to the west.

_There's something I need to tell you,_ she says. _But you can't react, and you can't let_ anyone _suspect you know it. Can you do that?_

Phi doesn't hesitate to give her answer. _Tell me,_ she says, strong and sure. _I won't let on what I know._

Quil lets out another shuddering breath and lets the connection break. When she brings her awareness back to the room and the people around her, instead of the magical connection stretching far across the distance between them and Phi, Allan is watching her but not looking alarmed, and a handful of the others are looking intrigued but a little puzzled, like they're not sure what her words might have meant. And Terry is still holding on tight to her hand like he doesn't mean to let go, and there isn't anything in her that's heartless enough to make him.

"I warned her," she says softly, to Allan's nod and Terry's sharp, hitched breath. "So she won't startle or give herself away. I'll tell her tomorrow, first thing after I've rested."

The quiet that settles over the group after that is heavy and somber, everyone's faces grim as they no doubt contemplate the danger that Phi's going to be in, that she is in, and the impossible task ahead of them of trying to figure out how to slay a dragon who has a kingdom's resources at his beck and call. Terry, leaning in a little against Quil's legs, turns his face in towards her and presses it to the soft wool of her skirt and just breathes there, unsteady and too fast. Quil doesn't think he's crying, just thinking too well about the dangers facing Phi and all the hundreds of different ways things can go terribly wrong. And she knows _that_ sort of fear her own self, the horrible yawning chasm of it that threatens to swallow you whole, so she strokes a hand over his hair for a time and then leaves it resting lightly on his shoulder, gently urging him to stay just where he is, letting him take what meager comfort she's able to give.

"Well," Gari says at length, when the minutes have dragged out as slow and thick as honey in winter. "We're going to have to reconsider a great deal, in light of this new information. But I think we all deserve to have the day to come to terms with it, before we start planning in earnest. Shall we have some music, in the meantime?"

A few of the others murmur assent, and no one disagrees outright, so Gari picks up her lute from where it's propped, leaning up against the leg of her chair, and begins to pluck out a series of notes that make the others smile with recognition.

Lanra starts singing first, his voice deep and lovely, and after a verse or two the others join in, one by one, even Terry, who smiles and shakes his head at first but then laughs good-naturedly and adds his voice to the others when Kal kicks his ankle and gives him a pointed look.

It's not a song Quil knows, but the others sing it with the ease of long familiarity, their voices blending together until the whole cottage feels bursting at the seams with music, and it feels like the glowing light of the fire, warm and comforting and feeling like home, shining bright in the middle of their forest.

Quil hums along once she's caught the melody, unable to help getting caught up in the rhythm of the music and the voices around her, and no one seems to mind if she misses a note here or there, or can't anticipate with the rest of them when the melody shifts and changes in the middle of a verse. It feels good just to be a part of them in some way, this family that took her in without hesitation, that's done more for her in the few days she's been with them than Seath ever did in all the time he called her his ward.

When the song ends, Gari slides seamlessly into the next one, and the voices of the others die out until it's just Gari singing by herself, her voice high and clear and sweet, and it's another one that Quil's never heard but it makes the others exchange smiles with one another, and sigh a little, and Terry presses in a little closer against the side of her leg, and he doesn't startle when her tail hooks around his arm, just tips his face up to her and gives her a small smile before turning his attention back to Gari's song.

Eventually, Kal glances at Quil in the moment between one song and the next, where Gari's still plucking at her lute but the chorus of voices have died down before picking the next song back up again, and he tilts his head at her and says, "You don't sing?"

She smiles at him a little and shakes her head. "It's not that. I don't know these songs."

"Tell me one you do know, then," Gari says, watching her as her fingers pluck an idle tune from the lute, as though she can't bear to keep them still, or to have the music end.

Quil flounders and makes a helpless gesture, and Terry's hand curls around her ankle and squeezes there, comforting and steadying, and she can't think of how he knew she needed the reassurance until she glances down at him and realizes that her tail's wrapped itself tighter around his arm, the tip flicking against it, a sign of agitation that would be obvious to anyone who knew tieflings. She grimaces an apology at him and forces herself to loosen her grip, but he doesn't let go of her in turn, just keeps his hand around her ankle as though he could keep her grounded just with that.

He probably can. He probably will, she thinks, her pulse already steadying. She looks back to Gari and says, "I'm not familiar with any instruments. I wouldn't know how to tell you how to play it."

"Just start singing," Gari suggests. "I'll jump in once I've caught the tune."

There are any number of songs she could sing for them, but she's quiet a moment, letting the warmth of Terry's hand on her ankle steady her, and she doesn't choose any of the court songs she knows, though they're lovely and good for groups to sing to. Instead, when she shuts her eyes and starts to sing, soft and gentle, it's a lullaby that her mother used to sing to her and Cordelia when they were young, and then would hum as she worked around the house or in her shop when they were older, and no longer needed to be coaxed to sleep.

Two verses in, a voice rises to join with hers in easy harmony, and she startles, her eyes flying open, to see Allan smiling at her, a little lopsided, his tongue forming the complicated syllables of Infernal with the ease of a lifetime of familiarity. Her voice falters and she nearly loses the rhythm of the song, but his stays steady, and she takes a deep breath and comes back in on the next line, and they finish the rest of the song together, while Gari accompanies them with a tune that makes a lovely counterpoint running beneath the song, and everyone else watches and listens in silence.

When the song ends, Quil's chest feels tight and her eyes sting. "Thank you," she says to Allan, still in Infernal.

He lifts a brow and answers her in kind. "For what?"

She has to swallow twice before she's able to get the words past the thickness in her throat. "Giving me back a little bit of home."

He inclines his head to her in acknowledgement. "It's been a long time since I had someone to sing in Infernal with. Thank you for that."

"That was lovely," Iain says, startling Quil's attention back to the rest of them. "What was it?"

"A lullaby," Quil says, and beside her Terry's breath hitches a little, and his fingers press more firmly against her ankle. "One my mother used to sing to me." And she can't help the way her voice breaks on the words, and she sees the sadness and the sympathy on the faces around her when they realize what it means, what it must mean that speaking of it would make her hurt like that, and she drops her gaze away before she loses her composure entirely. "I thought it was something she'd made up. I've never known anyone outside of our family who was familiar with it."

She can hear the warmth of a smile in Allan's voice when he answers her, even without looking at him. "My mother sang it to me, too."

"Kal," Iain says. "What's that one you're always singing about the house? Sing that for Quil, won't you?"

Kal glances sidelong at Iain with a smile of fond indulgence, then catches Gari's eye and nods. When she starts to play, he begins to sing, in a half-familiar language that must be Draconic.

After that, they all take turns singing lullabies that they grew up with, and Quil smiles and joins in on the ones in Common that she knows, too, and there's warmth and laughter and closeness, and through it all there's the steady weight of Terry leaning in against her, his chin on her knee, when he's not singing with the rest of them, and his hand curled around her ankle.

She drops a hand to his shoulder and squeezes, and hopes he understands what she's trying to say with it. That she's grateful, that she's glad, that it helped.

He looks up at her in response, and if the bright shine in his eyes is anything to judge by, she thinks he knows exactly what she means.

*

In the morning, Terry grumbles again at her when she rises, the first of the group to do so, but she catches his hand where he's worked it out from beneath the blankets and gives it a squeeze and says only, "Phi," and it silences his protests. A moment later, he shifts beneath the covers and rises, blinking bleary-eyed and frowning like getting up when the dawn's still new is the worst thing he's ever had to do. But he gets up all the same, keeping the blanket from the bed draped over his shoulders, and he stoops to take up Quil's blanket from the floor and holds it out to her, too, until she relents and wraps it around herself.

"Should we wake Allan, too?" Terry asks on a bare whisper.

She hesitates and glances toward Allan, the lump of him under his blankets where he's sleeping on the other side of the cottage, still and occasionally snoring very faintly. She chews on the edge of her lip, then blows out a breath. "No. Let him sleep. Just... keep a good distance from me, when I cast the spell, just in case."

Terry nods and holds the door open for her, and follows behind her as she leads the way outside, back to the flat stone that she's used before, a safe distance away from the house and the rest of the family.

When she settles down onto it, sitting cross-legged with the quilt puddled around her, Terry does the same, sitting just before her, his gaze steady and waiting on hers.

She hisses air through her teeth. "No, not so close. If my magic turns to fire--"

"I'll be fine."

"You'll _burn._ "

He catches her hand and squeezes it, squeezes it hard, demanding her attention. "You can argue if you like, but you won't win this one. Not with me. I'm not going to treat you like you're something to be afraid of every time I'm in your company, Quil, I'm just not. Not when I know how far from the truth that is."

She stares at him, long and hard, and she wants to protest, wants to point out that he should know better than anyone that it _is_ true, he has the burn scars now to prove it. But she believes it when he says he won't relent, and Phi is still waiting for Quil to give her the information that she needs to have, so she just hisses out another unhappy breath and mutters, "Fine, then, it's on your head," and shuts her eyes and grasps at her magic before he can respond.

_Don't react if you're not alone, not at all,_ she says to Phi across the thread of magic stretching between them. _But you need to know. Seath is a dragon. An ancient and powerful and horrible one._

Phi's response is a long time coming. It takes minutes, or longer, and Quil holds her breath and clings to that line of magic stretching out and away from her. It wouldn't be holding the way that it is if the spell hadn't worked. It had to have. She had to have heard. She had to have.

Finally, she hears Phi's voice in her head, and she sucks air into her aching lungs and buries her face in her hands, shaking with relief. _That explains some things,_ Phi says, and as collected as her words are, there's a thread of barely-contained shock in her voice. _A_ dragon. _Gods. I assume the others know. If there's any more information they need, any reconnaissance I can do while--_

"No," Quil gasps, and then stuffs her hands against her mouth because she wants to shout it, wants to scream, _No, no, no!_ , wants to take that broken thread of magic and force it across the distance and tell Phi, _no, you can't, that's the opposite of what I just said, you have to stay safe_ , but she can't, because she's not strong enough and it's going to fail and Terry is _right there,_ sitting knee to knee with her and looking so alarmed and so concerned, and she's already set him on fire once, she _can't_.

Terry leans forward, lays his hand on her knee and watches her with wide, solemn eyes. "What is it?" She can tell by the steel he's put into his voice and the slight quaver that he can't keep out of it that he's bracing for something terrible. "Has something happened to her?"

Quil shakes her head quickly, desperately. "It's not that. She's fine, I think. She sounds fine. But I told her, I told her what he is, and she wants to know if she can get _information_ for you all. She's going to get herself killed!"

Terry lets out his breath carefully, like it's all he can do not to keep it from rushing out all at once, and his eyes shut for a moment before he nods once. "She's brave, but she's not stupid. She won't do anything foolhardy."

Quil stares at him. "Everything she's done since I met her has been foolhardy."

That, impossibly, makes the set of Terry's shoulders ease, makes his mouth pull into a smile, albeit a crooked one. "She knows what she's about. Taking smart risks isn't the same as taking no risks at all."

Quil can't imagine which part of anything that Phi's done for her could have possibly seemed like a _smart_ thing to do, but she doesn't say it. "I can't tell her not to until tomorrow."

"If she asked, she'll wait for an answer before she acts."

There's not much solace to be had in that, but Quil nods, and takes what she can in it all the same. "Do you want to go back?"

He gives her a long, considering look before he answers. "Do _you?_ "

She presses her lips together, mouth flattening into a line. "I want to see what else I can learn to do with my magic. But I'm not going to do that while you're here, just asking to be set on fire again."

His expression flicks through a series of expressions, startled to chagrined before finally settling on resolved. "What if you get caught up a tree again, with no one around to catch you?"

"I'll live," she says, dry, dry enough to ensure he knows the rest of what she's left unspoken: _I'll live, but you might not._

He looks none too pleased about it, but he sighs and gets to his feet, then offers a hand down to help her to hers, waiting to see if she'll take it. "At least wait until Allan's up and can come join you. You shouldn't do this alone."

She considers his hand, considers whether she wants to take it or stand her ground. "I've always been alone," she says softly. "Or nearly always, for as long as I've had these powers."

"And how's that worked out for you?" he asks, just as soft, infinitely gentle, like he understands the blow his words will strike and as though he can do something to shield her from it, if he says it kindly enough.

She still flinches, all the same, and her breath comes sharp through her lungs. "Better than it has for those too near me, on the occasions that I wasn't alone."

"Come back to the house," he says, and he sounds weary, weary from more than just the early hour. "Wait until Allan's up. Let him help you, if you won't let me." The set of his shoulders sags a little when she places her hand in his, like he was braced for her refusal, or a blow. Like they might have been the same thing. He helps her to her feet, then keeps hold of her hand once she's on them, keeping her just before him a moment longer and searching her gaze. She can't imagine what he's hoping to find there. "The thing about having a family is, you don't have to do things alone. Not anymore. Let us be here for you."

"Family have always been the ones I've ended up hurting most," she says, low, and turns to head back towards the cottage, leaving him to follow behind her.

*

She doesn't go back inside right away, but detours instead to check in on the bees, already awake and humming about the garden. As soon as she nears the hive, a few fly over to her, to land on her horns and her hand and the point of an ear, making her bite back laughter at the tickle of its feet across her skin. "Morning, girls," she says, and brushes her fingers gently over them in greeting before carrying them over to the hive and prying back the top branches from where they've woven themselves together, peering inside. There's the first few cells of comb beginning to be built on the crossed branches she'd made for them, and she pulls the one with the most out to look it over and smiles, her heart fiercely glad to see that already, the queen's begun to lay eggs in some of the cells, and others have nectar stores that the bees have gathered, waiting to be ready to be capped.

She returns the sticks and their comb back to where she'd taken them from and lets the branches settle back over the hive. She can hear sounds of movement inside the cottage, voices exchanging conversation too low to be made out through the walls, the first smell of woodsmoke on the air as someone stokes the embers back up into a proper fire.

She lingers with the bees a while longer, perhaps a quarter-hour, letting their soft, familiar drone comfort and steady her before she brushes off the bees who are still clinging to her, gently sending them back to rejoin their hive, and turns, resolute, to go inside.

In the cottage, most everyone is up, if looking varying degrees of awake. There's coffee made, the warm scent of it filling the room, and she doesn't have to do more than step inside before someone is filling a mug and pressing it into her hands. Most of the blankets have been removed from the floor, or at least pulled onto the laps of those who are sitting there, making at least a little room to pick her way between people. Space is at even more of a premium now than it had been, with Gari added to their number, but Iain shuffles sideways into Kal's space when he sees her looking for a place to sit, and elbows him with a grin when he grumbles good-naturedly at the invasion, and she squeezes herself in between him and the side of the trunk he'd been leaning against, offering him a thankful smile.

Gari has her lute laid out across her lap, sipping coffee with one hand while she plucks at its strings idly with the other, not like she means to begin playing in earnest but just like she doesn't like to have her hands idle, even this early in the morning.

As the conversation resumes from the small ripple of interruption her return had been to it, she realizes with a quick lurch of her stomach that they're talking about Seath, about dragons and how one might fight them. There's a screaming voice in the back of her mind that wants to tell them to slow down, that they're rushing this and it's only going to make it all the more likely that they're all going to die horribly, beneath Seath's claws or between his teeth, that if they're going to insist on doing this they need to take the time to do it properly. But she also understands their urgency, feels her own impatience burning in her and knows it must be a shadow compared to that of those who know and love Phi best. She's in danger, even more so now than she'd been before, and of course they want to see her safe from it as soon as possible, even if it means putting themselves into it in her stead. Quil would do it without hesitating if she knew how, if there were even the slightest chance that she could do something that would help in any way at all.

They're not talking about Phi, though, at least not directly, though it's obvious she's on everyone's minds. They're talking about dragons, about weapons and armor and spells, and Quil shuts her eyes and breathes in the steam rising from her coffee and asks what she hasn't heard anyone address, not once, though it seems like a glaring oversight. "What exactly do you mean to do if you succeed?"

The conversation falters to a stop. She opens her eyes to find most everyone looking at her, considering her, and she has a horrible, sinking moment to think they might not have actually ever considered that, before Gari speaks up.

"I'm a lady by birth, as you noted yesterday," she says. "My mother is Suon Jorani, warlord of the borderlands not too distant from here, and I was raised to be her heir. I know how to lead, and I'll step into his place once we've taken him down, at least until we're able to find a more permanent solution."

Quil watches her for a moment, frowning. "You mean to take the throne yourself? You'll be seen as a conqueror, not a savior. Not everyone is like you all, not everyone has seen through Seath's lies to the treachery behind them, and particularly not those he's allowed to remain closest to him. They won't thank you for what you've done for them, and they won't kneel for a stranger."

"For a complete stranger, perhaps," Gari agrees lightly, inclining her head. "But they know Phi by now, and hopefully trust her, and have no reason to suspect her of harboring ill will towards Seath. She's been a faithful retainer of his all this time, after all. And she knows me, and will vouch for me, and her endorsement will have weight with the court. That was always the plan, and part of the reason why she worked so hard to make a place for herself in his palace, and why she's stayed for so long. She has to be a familiar presence, and a trusted one, so she can help to ease the transition."

Quil scrubs a hand over the back of her neck, giving herself a moment to think. She hates the idea of Phi putting herself in even more danger than she already is, and planning on endorsing Seath's replacement is exactly that. "If she supports you," she says quietly, "and they reject you, she'll suffer for it. You'll probably both be executed as traitors, and anyone else associated with you and your grab for power."

Lanra hisses out a sharp breath. "It's not a _grab for--_ "

" _I_ know that," Quil snaps. "They won't see it that way. I told you, they're not going to see what you're doing as liberation. The people might, perhaps, the ones who have suffered most under his rule, but no king -- or queen," she acknowledges, with a nod to Gari, "can survive on his people's support alone. You need the nobility on your side. You need the court, and they're going to be harder to convince. They've lived well under Seath, it's how he's kept power for so long." She takes a deep, steadying breath. "Maybe Phi can do it. Maybe she can win them over for you. I don't know. But I lived in the court for a long time, and Phi was a stranger to me. She's lived there, she's made herself a fixture there, but I don't know that the nobility will have taken any more notice of her than they would of a doorknob or a candlestick. She's not aristocracy, not even gentry, and so she may have been entirely beneath their notice."

Everyone around the small room looks troubled, and Quil falters to a halt, her stomach knotting. She twists her fingers together and drops her gaze, says, "But perhaps I'm wrong. I never cared to join in on fox hunts, where I might have stood a greater chance of meeting her. Phi would know better than I would how people in the palace feel about her. I just don't know that this is going to be as easy as you seem to think it is."

Gari leans forward and squeezes her shoulder, reassuring. "None of us have expected any of this to be easy," she says. "We've all known it's going to be hard work from the very start."

Quil laughs, hollow and humorless. "Killing an ancient dragon might be the easiest piece of your whole plan."

Gari smiles at her in answer, just as grim. "You may well be right."

It's enough, to know that none of them are expecting to walk through the palace gates and receive a hero's welcome. She can't reasonably expect much more of them, so she just nods and settles back beside Iain, and lets them return to the conversation she'd interrupted.

*

Later, after the conversation has wound its way to an end and the group has scattered to go about their tasks for the day, Allan finds her outside with the bees, and startles her when he lays a hand on her shoulder.

He gives her an apologetic smile when she jumps. "Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you."

She shakes her head and waves a hand, dismissing his concern. "I was listening too closely to the bees, and not well enough to hear anything else."

"Terry mentioned you might want to try to practice with your magic a little bit more, and I came to offer my assistance, if you think it'd be helpful."

Quil grimaces a little and sighs, her tail flicking through the tips of the grasses at her feet. "You don't have to do that. I can't ask you to do that."

"You're not asking," he says. "I'm offering."

She curls her tail in around her ankle. Allan of all people will know what the restlessness means, and how to read every sign of agitation in her. "I figured out how to make the protection spell work," she admits quietly, watching the bees hum amongst the flowers of the garden. "But I didn't do it by following anything you taught me. I don't think I'm a very good student."

The noise that Allan makes is strangled, indignant. She waits, too cowardly to look at him, for him to scold her for ignoring what he'd said, when he clearly knows so much more than she does, and has so much more experience at it all. "You're not a very good _wizard,_ maybe," he says eventually, and she flinches. "But that's because you're not a wizard at all. Your magic doesn't work how mine does, and I could never make mine do the things yours does."

"Which part?" she asks, her words abruptly gone bitter and harsh. "The part where I nearly kill myself and anyone foolish enough to stand too close to me?"

He catches her hand and comes forward to stand at her side, pulling her about a little, so she's turned just a fraction towards him. "I have never once learned a spell that wasn't already written down and explained for me, in precise detail. I can follow instructions, when they're given to me, but I can't improvise the way you can. It's a strength, Quil, not a failing."

"But I didn't learn from you," she says. "Your spellbook just looks like a scribble to me. You'd just be wasting your time trying to teach me from it, and you all seem like you have a lot to do now anyway. I shouldn't keep you from it."

Allan is quiet beside her for a moment, thoughtful, like he's picking over each of his words until he's certain he's chosen the best ones. "It seems to me that you've spent so long trying to fight and contain your magic that you've never given yourself the opportunity to explore it. You might not be able to learn from a spellbook the way I can, but seeing the sorts of things that magic is capable of might help give you new ideas for things to try with your magic, to see if you can recreate them and make them work, or to branch off and try it a different way. Would you have ever thought to use your magic to protect yourself, if you hadn't seen Mage Armor in my spellbook first?"

She thinks about it a moment, makes herself think and be entirely honest, before she answers. "No. Probably not."

He nods once, like she's just settled the matter. "I may not be the best teacher for you, but I'm still happy to help, in whatever way I can. In whatever way will be most helpful to you. And if you want to take another look through my spellbook and see if there's anything in there that you might want to try to recreate in your own way, you're always welcome to. You don't have to ask."

There is a large part of her that wants to refuse him even now, that still feels like the safest thing to do with her magic is nothing at all. But she hasn't felt that same restless that was her constant companion in Seath's palace, not since she parted from Phi at the river and had no choice but to use her magic in order to survive. It wants her to use it, and seems so much less likely to burst out of her at inopportune moments when she does so, even if it is still as likely as not to go off the rails when she casts a spell. But at least she knows, then, when it's a danger. She can have Allan there with his counterspell ready, she can step away from the people it might hurt and keep them, if not herself, safe. She can sleep and eat and converse and live with a house full of others, and not fear that fire is going is going to burst from her at any moment.

And, too, there's danger on the horizon now, there's an impossible fight that they're all racing toward, and the only thing she can do to try to tilt the odds even a little bit closer to their favor is to stand with them, to fight with them. She needs to be able to do more than mend her torn clothing and shoot birds out of the sky. She needs something that might have any chance at all of touching a dragon, and Allan's right about one thing, at least: she needs help, if she's going to have a chance of doing that in time to be any help to them at all.

She takes a breath and nods, and says, "Thank you. That would be very helpful, I think."

He smiles, bright enough to reach his eyes, like he's genuinely glad she agreed.

"Not here," she says, and brushes off the few bees that had come over to keep her company. "It's too close to the house, and the garden, and the hive."

Allan nods his easy acceptance, and she leads him away to the place that she's well on her way to thinking of as _her spot_ , the flat rock in the middle of the trees that's good for sitting on. He sits at her side to start, once she's settled herself down, and takes his spellbook from its harness and offers it out to her.

She spreads the book open on her lap and flips through the pages, one by one. She finds the protection spell they'd spent so much time on already and runs her fingers lightly over the lines of the diagram that he's inscribed on the parchment, then moves on.

There are so many of them, a dizzying array to choose from, and some of them she considers, and traces a touch over the lines of the diagram, and can't figure out what on earth they're meant to do, or how she's meant to get her own magic to behave that way. Some of them feel impossible, like she'd never have the control or the finesse to accomplish it, but her gaze catches on one and her fingers hesitate on it, and she looks at the shape of the diagrams and the arcane sigils that Allan has inscribed for it and she can sense a kinship between it and the shape that her magic twists and warps itself into every time it threatens to explode around her.

She turns the book around, tilting it to show the page to Allan. "What is this one?"

He smiles when he sees what she's found. "That's similar to the cantrip I suspect you used to catch your bird, but a bit more powerful. It's a good choice, if you'd like to start there."

She nods. "I would."

He considers the page, and then glances around them, and when he looks back to her his smile has pulled a little crooked. "We should perhaps find someplace to practice this one that's a little less flammable, I think. There's a clearing not too far from here, if you don't mind a bit of a walk, that should give you enough open space to not have to worry too much about setting the woods on fire."

"I don't mind." She uncrosses her legs to stand. "And you can teach me the incantation for it while we walk?"

"An excellent idea," he says, and holds the book open before him as they begin to make their way deeper into the woods. "Now, the rhythm of this will make more sense to you, I think, once you have a chance to see how it interacts with the somatic component of the spell, but for now, just repeat after me..."

*

By the time they've reached the clearing, Quil is able to repeat the spell's incantation from memory to Allan's satisfaction. He stops her at the edge of it, a stretch of grasses and scrubby brush reaching out before them to the trees on the opposite side, not a great distance away but at least not crowding around them like back by the cottage, and while she waits there he walks out into the middle of the clearing, inspects the ground for a moment before he makes a sharp, pleased noise, and he picks up a long, crooked branch with a forked end. He finds a few stones nearby and moves them over to create a rudimentary support that he's able to wedge the point of the branch between, so that it sticks up mostly upright, and then he returns to her side. "Would you like a demonstration, so you can see how the verbal and somatic components work together?"

She nods and steps back and a little to the side of him, so she can better watch him as he casts the spell. "Please."

Allan holds his hands up before himself, a few inches between them, and begins to sweep them in a series of gestures as he recites the incantation. She can almost see what he means about the rhythm of it, how the gestures and the incantation work in concert and build off of one another, and magic builds between his hands as he does, until he finishes with his hands thrown out before him, and fire sparks from his palms and races out, three streaks of light that twist and dance around one another before they all hit the branch at the same time, right at the tip of one of its forked limbs, and the wood crackles and explodes, shearing off from the rest of the branch and raining the clearing around it with bits of blackened splinters and the sudden, bitter scent of smoke on the breeze.

All the air rushes out of Quil's lungs at once. "That was incredible. Will you show me how to do it?"

He comes over to stand before her, holds his hands up before himself in the same position he'd started from, and Quil lifts her hands and echoes him, and follows him as he demonstrates each movement, slowly at first, and then faster, until he's satisfied that she can keep up with him.

And then he steps back with a nod and says, "All right, now let's see you put the two of them together."

She turns, then, so that she's facing the branch and the far side of the clearing rather than Allan, even though this hadn't been enough instruction on its own for her to make the armor spell work, before. Still, she'd rather be cautious than take the risk of setting Allan, or anyone else, on fire.

The first time she runs through it, words and gestures combined, Allan stops her halfway through to correct her timing, shows her how to make sure everything fits together the way it's meant to, and then steps back again and gestures for her to try once more.

She squares her shoulders and does so, and it's much harder to try to remember both words and movements simultaneously. It takes her three tries before she's able to able to make it through without stumbling over some part of it, but when she does, Allan's smile is warm and approving, and he nods once. "Good, just like that. Do it again."

It's easier the second time, and the third, and when she's done it to Allan's satisfaction half a dozen times in a row, he says, "Now try to bring your magic into it."

She falters a little, hesitating before starting again. _This_ is the hard part, the part he can't tell her how to do because all he has is the diagrams in his spellbook that mean nothing to her. But he said it was similar to the fire she'd created and shot the bird down with, and she can see how it would be. He made three bits of fire, not the one that she'd managed, and hers had been a spark compared to the comet-streak of Allan's spell. But that's just bigger, and more. She can do that, she thinks. She can figure it out.

She shuts her eyes and remembers that moment in the woods, remembers how her magic had felt and behaved in the instant before the fire burst from her, or she tries to. It had been so fast, and she'd been startled, hadn't had the chance to think about it or do it deliberately. But she draws her magic up, twists it in a way that feels familiar, then holds it there and finds the places where she can do more, where she can stretch out the pattern her magic has made, work it bigger while still keeping it cohesive enough that it won't collapse entirely within her grasp.

She builds it up until it feels like almost too much, like she's barely able to contain the bright, humming, eager energy of it all, no matter how stable the pattern that she's woven it into is. And she knows she stands on the cusp of success or failure, that either it'll work or her magic will slip free while she hesitates and she'll send them both up in a conflagration, so she holds onto it all carefully and begins to speak, her voice low as she recites the incantation, her movements careful as she progresses through the gestures Allan taught her. With each word and each movement, her magic gets more difficult to hold onto, brighter and hotter and fighting her harder, until at the very end she's flinching back from it, sure that it's all going to go wrong now in the very last moments. But she pushes her way through it and forces herself to finish the spell, throws her hands out before her with the last, ringing words of the incantation and releases her grasp on her magic, and heat burns against her palms in the instant before fire flares against them and races away from her, three streaks of it so bright it makes her eyes sting, like she'd looked too directly into the sun.

They don't dance and twine elegantly around one another the way Allan's had. All three split off into different directions, one making more or less towards the branch while the ones on either side of it veer wide, and none of them hit anything but instead explode in the air as they near the far side of the clearing, and sparks rain down on the ground beneath them.

But it _worked_ , and Quil presses her hands over her mouth as giddy laughter bubbles up in her.

"That was fantastic!" Allan rushes over to her, wrapping her up in an enthusiastic embrace.

"I didn't hit anything," she says, but she's beaming, flush with even this much success.

He dismisses that with a wave of his hand. "Aim can be worked on. And everyone misses sometimes. I think you'll see an improvement if you focus on forming the magic as part of the spell, in concert with the somatic component." He holds his hands up between them and makes the first few movements of the spell as he says, "It's all meant to work together. Don't think of it as trying to do three different things at once. Think of it instead as the gestures being _part_ of forming the magic into shape, of the incantation helping to build the power and intensity."

She watches his hands as he moves through the spell's gestures and she thinks she can see how it would work, how it's like mending or sewing, movements of the hands that could be used to weave the magic through itself, twined together into a stable shape that'll behave in the way she's asking it to.

She echoes his movements, reciting the incantation and trying to envision the motions not just as a thing to be done in order to make the spell work, but as something that builds and shapes her magic itself, and it's faster this time, easier, and it's thrumming in her hands and straining for release by the time she's finished with the incantation, and this time when she throws her hands out before her the fire races from her, three separate rays of it just like before, and they still don't dance elegantly around one another the way Allan's did but this time they fly straight and true, and all three land squarely on the branch that Allan set up for her, and it bursts into flames and explodes from the impact, cinders spraying out in all directions.

Quil flinches back from one that comes flying towards them, though it falls short and lands in the grass at their feet, glows for a moment, and then fades to the black and grey of ash and soot.

Allan whoops and cheers, his face bright with gladness over her victory, and jogs out to where the branch had been in the middle of the clearing. He shoves one of the stones aside with his foot, then bends over. When he straightens, he has a short bit of wood in his hand, its end broken and blackened -- all that remains of the branch. He comes back with it and hands it to her like it's some sort of victory trophy, and she laughs as she takes it from him, and sees up close just what her magic was able to do.

"That was brilliant! Absolutely perfect. Gods, do you have any idea how long I had to study before I figured out that spell, when I first learned it? You're incredible." He stoops and gathers up a handful of small stones and broken pieces of sticks from the ground. "Would you like to try practicing your aim, to get a better feel for it? You should probably use your cantrip for that, you won't be able cast this one too many more times before you've tapped yourself out for the day. But you'll be able to get as much practice in as you like with Fire Bolt."

Giddiness and laughter is still bubbling up through her, making her feel buoyant. She nods, beaming back at Allan. "What are you thinking?"

He tosses up one of the stones in his hand, catches it, then holds it up between two fingers to show her, grinning. "What do you think about a moving target?"

She shakes her shoulders out, laughter fading as she nods. "I can try."

Allan's grin stays as bright as ever, though he quirks one brow up at her. "You hit a bird in mid-flight," he says. "You are absolutely capable of this."

There seems little point in protesting that she didn't do that on purpose, it all been an automatic reaction, unthinking, borne of hunger and desperation. She can guess well enough what he'd say to that, and he's not wrong, really. Whatever the reason she managed it, if she was capable of it accidentally, she should be capable of doing it intentionally. Maybe it'll take practice, maybe it'll be hard, but she did it once. She can do it again. She'll practice until she can.

"Go on, then," she says, and starts to move her hands through the air, building the magic up between them, thrilling at how natural it is now to recognize the similarities between this spell and the one she just cast. "Let's give it a go."

Allan nods and waits until she's nearly completed the incantation, until the magic is ready between her hands, and then he adjusts his grip on the stone and throws it across the clearing, throws it hard and quick.

Quil tracks it as it moves and throws the magic out towards it. The stone's flying too fast for her to be careful with her aim, she just has to let herself react and trust her reflexes. The spark of fire flies away from her, towards the stone, and she holds her breath as she watches their trajectories, angling in towards one another.

She overcompensated for the stone's movement. Her fire streaks past the stone just ahead of it, and the stone bounces off the trunk of a tree at the clearing's edge as her spell flares up into a small burst of flame a few yards beyond where the two should have collided.

"Good," Allan says, and doesn't react when she turns enough to shoot him a dubious look. "Again." And he throws another stone, a little smaller than the last and oblong in shape, so that it tumbles end over end through the air.

She does the same, faster this time, easier now that she's starting to get a sense of how her magic's supposed to feel when the spell works right. And this time her aim is true, and the fire streaks across the meadow and collides with the stone, shattering it with a loud crack that makes them both flinch.

Allan looks at her with a smile like she's a marvel, like she's done something incredible, even though he said cantrips are supposed to only be a simple magic.

They practice for an hour or longer, until Quil's only missing occasionally and the clearing is scattered with broken bits of charred wood and stone. And then Allan picks up three pebbles, shakes them into the middle of his palm, and gives her a considering look. "Do you think you've got one more Scorching Ray in you?"

Quil tests her magic, pulling at it, and it rises to her call as easily as it ever has, even though she's been using it all afternoon. It feels eager enough that she thinks she'll be able to build up as much of it as she needs for the spell, so she nods, says, "I think so, yes. What do you have in mind?"

"A challenge," he answers with a grin, and draws his arm back and throws all three pebbles together.

Quil pulls at her magic, twists and weaves it into shape with words and gestures, and releases the spell just as the stones reach the top of their arcs and start to droop back towards the ground. The fire pours from her, three separate rays that each streak towards one of the falling stones. Two impact with the bright flash of fire and magic, and the third, making toward the stone that flew farthest from Allan's hand, misses but only by inches.

Almost as soon as the magic flies from her, it rebounds, snapping back into the mass of it within her, and her magic ripples and writhes and lashes out another tendril, too quick for her to grasp it and pull it back, too strong for her to control, and her bright, glowing happiness at her victory curdles and turns to dread as the tendril whips out towards Allan, standing near her at her side, and before she can even cry out a warning, before he realizes what's happening and can try his counterspell, the magic touches him, and as soon as it does, he vanishes.

Quil presses her hands to her mouth, overwhelmed with horror. "Allan?" she whispers. But the place where he stood is now just open air, not even a body or a streak of soot to show where he'd been or what happened to him, only the impression of his boots left in the grass. "Oh gods..." She buries her face in her hands, shuddering, gasping. How is she supposed to go back to the cottage, to everyone who's been so kind to her, and tell them about _this?_ She doesn't even know what to tell them. That her magic lashed out and... what, _disintegrated_ him?

There's a sound like a breath, a little sigh and then a quiet chuckle, and then Allan's voice, his _voice_ , impossibly, saying, "Oh, well. That's a handy trick, if you can do it at will." Something touches Quil's arm, warmth and pressure, and she jerks her head up from her hands with a gasp, but she's still standing alone on the edge of the clearing, and her heart is in her throat and oh, it _aches_. "Quil, I'm fine. I'm here." The touch vanishes, and a moment later there's a spiral of sparks manifesting in mid-air, spiraling up as though rising from a fire that doesn't exist, and almost at the same time, Allan is there again, standing just where he had been, not looking hurt at all, only faintly amused.

"What--" She gapes at him, and doesn't quite dare to let herself hope, or to be glad. "What did I _do_ to you?"

"A harmless spell," he assures her. "A useful one, in the right circumstances, but harmless. It's just Invisibility. It's a fragile spell, though, easily dispelled. Casting a spell while under its influence will do it." He waves his hand, pointedly, and the sparks swirl about it for a moment before he closes his fist, and they spiral up to a point and then vanish. "Attacking someone would do it, too, but you hardly deserved that. A simple cantrip seemed the more expedient way to reassure you." He lays a hand on her shoulder, the same warmth and pressure that she'd felt before, and squeezes a little as though to reassure her that he's real, and there, and not disintegrated or disappeared. "Have you done that before?"

When she draws a breath, it shudders unsteadily through her lungs. She shakes her head, not daring herself to speak yet, and then reaches out to him and presses a hand to his chest, so she can feel for herself that he isn't some sort of horrible illusion.

He's steady beneath her palm, solid, and she can feel the thump of his heart, easy and slow. She takes another uneven breath, and a third, and then her hand curls, grabbing a fistful of Allan's lapel, and she steps in and presses her face against his shirt and leans there, incapable of answering, of doing anything more than just breathing raggedly against him.

"Hey," he says gently, and brings his arms around her. "Hey, it's all right. I'm here. You didn't hurt me. It was just Invisibility."

"I thought I'd done something terrible to you," she says, her voice quavering.

He sets her back, crouching down a little so that when he meets her eyes, they're on a level with one another. His mouth pulls into a lopsided smile. "You think it would be that easy to hurt me?"

She gives a wet, hiccuping laugh and draws back enough to scrub at her eyes with the heel of her hand. "It's always been easy to hurt people," she says with a sigh. " _Not_ doing it is the hard part."

"Well," he says. "Today you didn't." He ruffles her hair a little and gives her a kiss on her brow. "You can look at the page for that one in my spellbook, if you'd like to try to learn to do it intentionally. But maybe we should call it a day and head back home, for now, and try that some other time."

She nods, scrubs at her eyes one more time, though she's not really crying, they're just stinging like they want to, and then steps back enough that Allan has to release her from the hug.

"Hey," he says again, and waits until she's glanced at him before he continues. "You were incredible today. You really were."

She can't help the way her mouth twists at that, with doubt and disbelief. "I learned a new spell," she says softly, the most she can say for herself.

Allan beams, bright and uncomplicated in his happiness. "Damn right you did." And he slings his arm around her shoulder as he leads her back through the woods toward the cottage and the people who are waiting for them, and as they walk he keeps up a steady stream of easy conversation that leaves her no opportunity at all to think too long about about what happened, or what might have happened, or to sink back into misery and despair over it.

Back at the cottage, Iain is out sitting cross-legged in the dirt, coaxing a new patch of flowers up from the earth while a few bees buzz about him curiously. At their return, he lets his attention drift away from it enough to smile at them both in greeting, though the brightness of it fades a little beneath concern when he turns it on Quil. "Is everything all right?"

"Great," Quil says, too quick for him to think it's anything but a lie. She crouches down next to him, unable to help watching the slender, sprouting stems that twist and stretch as they grow. "Are these ones for your potions?"

He watches her sidelong for a moment, silent and considering, before he nods and turns back to the flowers, pushing a fresh wave of magic into the soil. "What sort of a heartless druid would I be if I went through and harvested your hive's sustenance right out from underneath them? It'll take a few more days for these to grow before I can start brewing a new batch of potions, but we're waiting on the hive to have produced enough excess honey for us to gather anyway, so there's little point in rushing it."

"It's too soon to take anything from them," she says, wrapping her arms around her knees, her tail braced against the ground to help her stay balanced. "It's early enough in the season that they should still have plenty of time to build up enough stores to see them through the winter, but even so, they're a new hive. We can't take everything they make as they make it. We have to leave enough for them to subsist on. And it takes time, for nectar to become honey."

Iain glances sideways at her, smiling a little. "That wasn't a nudge," he says, gentle. "I know well enough that there are some things in nature that can be rushed, and some that can't. It'll take as long as it takes, and I'll be glad for it whenever it's ready."

She nods like she understands, or agrees, but that's a lie, mostly. She can't understand how he can be so easy with waiting when Phi's in danger, and more so with every day that passes. She doesn't know how any of them can bear it, how they've borne it this long already.

"Will you bring some to me, when you've had your first harvest?"

She looks at him sharply. "You're leaving?"

"In a few days." He brushes his palm across the tops of the flowers just beginning to bud before him. "When the flowers are ready for picking, and I can start brewing the potions. I'll only be getting in everyone else's way, if I try to brew them here, and it'll take a few days anyway." His smile spreads, turning just a little teasing, the barest hint of an edge to it. "Besides, I'm sure people will be glad for the extra room made by Kal and I taking our leave. There's too much of us packed in on that floor as it is, it's a wonder we don't all have kinks in our backs."

It's silly to be distressed by the idea of him leaving, but he's been kind, was the first to be nothing but kind to her, and even with half a dozen people still filling the cottage to bursting it feels as though it'll be a little bit empty without him.

"Hey," Iain says, and rocks sideways to bump his shoulder into hers. "We're not _that_ long of a walk away, if it comes to it. And you can always Send to me."

She sighs a little, and grimaces. "I'm not strong enough to do that more than once a day. It didn't go well, when I tried. And I've been saving it for Phi."

"Well, then we'll have to wait until your honey's ready, I suppose, and when you bring it to me you'll have to tell me about all the ridiculousness that I've missed out on, not being here."

It makes her laugh, a little. "I'll do that," she promises.

Iain nods once, says, "Good," like that settles it, then adds, "Just you watch. I'm going to put you to work when you come visit me, have you crushing petals and chopping herbs so much that you'll be glad to see the back of us, and come back here to this lot."

"That sounds lovely," Quil says on a sigh, and doesn't miss the way he glances at her, a little puzzled, a little thoughtful. "My mother was an herbalist," she tells him, and even smiles as she does so, at the memories of sitting at the table in her mother's shop, crushing dried leaves to powder, measuring out precise amounts on her delicate set of scales and weights. "I have a lot of practice at it."

Iain laughs and grins, his face as bright as the sun overhead. "Well, now you've committed. You'd better take your ease here while you can get it, because I'm going to put you to work the minute you're close enough to shove a pestle in your hands, see if I don't."

He's still close by her side, never returned the space between them after he bumped his shoulder against hers, and so she leans sideways and lays her head on his shoulder, just sitting with him a moment, watching the new, tender flowers sway in the breeze as her bees hum about them, busy at work gathering their nectar.

*

In the morning, Quil rises as soon as she wakes, and for once, Terry doesn't try to stop her. He lifts his head from his pillow and blinks blearily at her, and when she's halfway down the path to her flat stone she hears crunching footsteps behind her and turns to find him following after her, bundled up in a blanket and looking like he needs half a dozen cups of coffee to wake up fully, but also looking resolute.

"You should keep some distance," she warns him as she settles into her place. "Just in case."

He doesn't acknowledge it with anything more than a glance, and then he takes his own place, just before her, the same as ever, and there's still that resolved hardness in his eyes, daring her to say otherwise.

She huffs out a breath of air. "Yesterday, my magic turned Allan invisible."

Terry's brows climb a fraction. A hint of a smile curves up the corner of his mouth. "That sounds exciting."

"I thought it had disintegrated him."

The humor dies, leaving him very solemn as he holds her gaze, as he says, steady and sure, "You're not going to hurt me."

"You don't know that."

He leans forward and catches her hand, gives it a squeeze. "Just tell me what Phi says, once you've spoken with her."

She lets out another sharp breath, but there's no point in protesting and she'd be wasting time if she tried. She shuts her eyes and reaches for her magic, feels it leap to her touch and spool out across the distance almost without her needing to direct it, the spell intimately familiar by now. _No reconnaissance,_ she says firmly, leaving no room for compromise in her tone. _No digging for information. What they need from you -- what we all need from you -- is for you to stay safe._

There's a momentary stretch of silence, and then Phi's voice in her head, sounding as frustrated as Quil's ever heard her. _I need the same for all of you. I need to be able to help make sure it happens. Tell me how I can help._

The spell ends, her magic coiling back into her, and Quil opens her eyes to find Terry watching her with quiet concern. It's only then that she realizes what her expression has done without her meaning it to, how it's gone pinched and unhappy, her brows down, her mouth pursed, her tail lashing through the brush behind her.

"She still wants to help," she says, her words gone sharp and upset. "I told her not to, I told her to stay safe, but she's not listening to me."

Terry, inexplicably, smiles. "That's my girl," he says softly, and it's the most heartbreaking smile she's ever seen.

"How do you not go out of your mind with worry?" Quil demands on a rush, her hands clenching into fists on the fabric of her skirt. "She's not even my wife and I can hardly bear it."

"You don't, really," he admits. "You just get better at carrying it with you, and doing what needs to be done in spite of it. If you think I'm not up half the night worrying about what might happen to her while I'm too far away to do anything about it-- Well." His smile stretches, but doesn't look any happier. "That's only because you wear yourself out so thoroughly that you're fast asleep before you ever have to endure listening to me toss and turn."

"I don't know how to," she admits softly, staring down at her hands, the fabric bunched and creased between her fingers. She can't bring herself to let go and smooth it out. "I can't breathe for fear. For all of you, but at least you all are here, I can see for myself whether you're all right or not. I can only talk to Phi once a day, and there's so much that could happen between one Sending and the next." She stammers to a stop abruptly, remembering that until she'd come, they hadn't even had that. They'd had long stretches of weeks or months or longer, with no way of knowing whether Phi was safe or not, or what might have befallen her.

It was no wonder, really, that Terry had decided to sneak into the palace with little more than a daggerto plunge into Seath's back. Even that had to be better than doing nothing.

"Yeah," Terry says with a sigh, like he's thinking about the same thing. "Sometimes it's terrible, loving someone. But if we're lucky, it's outnumbered by the times when it's wonderful." He curves a hand around Quil's arm and squeezes it, then gets to his feet before offering a hand down to her. "Are you ready to go back?"

There's little else she can do. She nods and takes his hand, lets him help her up. Once she's on her feet, she doesn't let go of Terry's hand, and he doesn't either, and they walk back to the cottage together, clinging to one another.

*

"I want to learn how to do that again," she tells Allan, once everyone's woken and had coffee and breakfast, and she's had the opportunity to check in on her bees. "You said it could be helpful. I want to know how to do it on purpose."

He smiles at her, looking maybe a little startled by the abrupt demand. "It can be, absolutely. And I'll help you in whatever way I can." He makes a little, helpless gesture toward his spellbook, not yet strapped into the harness on his belt. "I'm afraid I don't know that spell, though. I know _of_ it, of course, but I haven't managed to acquire it for myself. You may be in for a day of experimentation, if you want to try to figure it out on your own."

It sets her back a little, blinking. "Can I-- I'm not going to experiment on _you._ " Just the thought of it makes her shudder. It sounds like a fine way to end up with Allan accidentally caught in the middle of another conflagration. "Can I practice on a stick or something, like we did yesterday?"

He looks thoughtful a moment, head tilted to the side as he scratches behind a horn. "From what I understand of the spell, it's for making living creatures invisible, not objects. I don't know that it'd work on a dead branch. You can practice on me, though, I don't mind." His gaze is on her, searching her face, kind but too knowing. "I'll make sure to study counterspell this morning," he offers softly, "so I have it ready."

She wraps her arms around her ribs, holding on tight. "I want you to do that anyway. But I'm _not_ practicing on you."

He doesn't argue further, just inclines his head in agreement, and she's grateful for it. She doesn't have the werewithal to argue with him about it, not today. Not after this morning.

They don't bother going all the way back to the clearing, not when she's not intending to be hurling any fire around. She just goes to her stone and sits, and frowns at Allan when he tries to sit near her, until he sighs and backs away a short distance. It's not far enough to entirely save him, if she sets herself on fire again, but at least he won't be in the heart of it with her, and there's a hard set to the line of his mouth that makes her suspect that she's pushed him as far as he's going to allow her to.

She closes her eyes and pulls her magic up into her hands, holds it there glowing and eager, ready to be loosed, and she thinks about the day before when it had done this, all on its own. It had all happened so fast, she hadn't had the chance to study it or to see what it was doing, the shape it was forming itself into when it made Allan vanish from her sight.

It hadn't been anything like the protection spell he'd taught her, which had wrapped her up in a cage of magic, surrounding her entirely. This hadn't enveloped Allan, hadn't swallowed him up to make him invisible, it had simply touched him.

So whatever she has to do to it, to get it to recreate that effect, she has to do before she sets the magic free from her. She turns her focus to the twisting, thrumming ball of it between her hands, frowns and tries to push her will into it, tries to _think_ what she wants at it hard enough for it to take her meaning and shape itself to do so, the way it has before, when she's been truly desperate. She thinks _disappearing_ , thinks invisibility, thinks about sitting here in front of Allan one moment and the next, with a touch of her magic, being gone.

Her magic shifts and twists itself between her hands, folds and stretches and warps until there's a pattern to it, not one she recognizes but it's _something_ , something with intent. She grabs a thread and tries to reach out with it, the way it had done on its own the day before, and as she does so Allan draws a breath and says, "I think--"

She doesn't hear the rest of it. Before he can finish, before she has the chance to stop and wait and hear what he has to say, her magic twists at her touch and mist rises up from the ground around her, silver and shimmering in the sunlight. It swirls around her, dense enough that she can't see through it to Allan or the woods around them. And then there's a sudden, wrenching sensation, as though the ground has lurched sideways beneath her, and the mist vanishes and she falls a few inches, though she'd been sitting squarely on her stone, and lands on soft earth and crunching leaves. The mist is gone, vanished just as quickly as it rose, and the trees around her aren't the ones that she'd been looking at a moment before, and she can't see Allan or the stone she'd been sitting on.

"Quil?" That's Allan's voice, a little distant, but relief rushes through her to hear it. She stands, brushes the dirt and broken leaves from her skirt, and starts toward where it had sounded like it was coming from.

"Allan? Where are you?"

"Just where you left me." He sounds amused, at least, not hurt in any way, and that makes her breathe easier, too. "Sorry, I didn't warn you quick enough."

"What happened?" She picks her way through the brush and the litter, following the sound of his voice. "That's not what happened to you when I turned you invisible, is it? I could still hear you as though you were standing right next to me."

"I was," he says. "No, that's not what happened yesterday." She comes out of the brush, clambering carefully over the gnarled roots of a few trees, and Allan turns toward her, his expression clearing. "Congratulations," he says, laughter bubbling through his voice. "You discovered Misty Step. All on your own, without even a spell scroll to glance over first." And he shakes his head like he's baffled, like he's disbelieving, like she's a marvel he can't quite figure out.

"What's Misty Step?" She sits down on her stone again, facing Allan, leaning forward with her elbows braced on her knees. "Whatever it is, it's not what I was trying for."

He grins at her like somehow that's wonderful, not like she made a mistake, not like she failed at what she was trying to do. "I think," he says, "having a little more theory under your belt will serve you well. What do you know about the schools of magic?"

"Schools like universities? I know they exist, but I never went to one, or knew anyone who did, and there weren't any in the city I grew up in."

He laughs a little, his grin spreading, and rubs a hand across his face for a moment. "Sorry, no. That's not exactly what I meant. There are universities for studying magic, yes, but when wizards talk of schools of magic, they mean the general categories that any given spell falls into. There are eight of them. There's evocation, which we had a lot of fun with yesterday. Those are spells which harness the physical energy of your magic, like your fire yesterday. Abjuration, which are protective spells usually, used to shield and defend. Mage Armor falls under that school. And-- Well, you don't need the full lesson if you don't want it, but for the purposes of this conversation, the salient schools are conjuration, which involves either creating objects out of nothing or moving them from one location to another; and illusion, which are spells that focus on deceiving the senses of those around you.

"Oh," she says softly. "I was thinking about disappearing, about being here one moment and gone the next. You're saying I was thinking about it too much like conjuration, and I shouldn't have been thinking that _I_ wanted to disappear, but that I wanted you to not be able to see me."

Allan beams. "That's exactly it. You're not trying to apply an effect to yourself, you're trying to affect those around you." And then he laughs, face bright, hands clasped between his knees. "Gods, Quil, you're so clever. I won't tell you how long it took me to grasp the concept of the different schools of magic, but suffice it to say, watching you pick it up and run with it in the space of a few minutes is humbling. You're going to be incredible. You already are, but with just the barest chance for practice and instruction... You're going to be the one teaching me new spells soon enough."

Quil makes a skeptical face as she settles back on her seat, shifting to find a more comfortable position on the rock. "I doubt that." When Allan frowns, his delight fading away beneath something far less pleasant, she adds, "I wouldn't know how to write them down for you."

He sighs a little, like he knows that's not really how she meant it, but he's smiling too, indulgently enough that she thinks he's not going to call her on it. And she's smart enough to know a gift when she's been given one, so she shuts her eyes before she can change her mind, draws her magic up again, and this time thinks about obscuring, about her magic weaving a veil around her, about making her seem as transparent as glass, about Allan looking at her but not _seeing_ her. And when her magic's built up between her hands into something complex but stable, something that _looks_ like the pattern of a spell, she takes a deep breath, silently mouths a brief prayer asking for luck, and releases the spell into herself.

She can feel the magic coursing through her, working over her, like electricity skating across her skin, but she doesn't feel any different herself. She opens her eyes, frowning and wondering if she'd managed to do the wrong spell again, to find Allan's gaze not quite focused on her, and his smile firmly back in place. "Quil?" He pitches his voice louder than it had been a moment before, like he's not sure how far it needs to carry.

"I'm right here," she says, and he gives a sharp, delighted laugh. "Can you--"

Her magic unspools from around her the moment she stops thinking about the shape and the pattern and her intent with it, and she lurches back, afraid by instinct, but it only coils back inside of her, waiting to be called upon again, and when she looks back at Allan, his gaze is on her again, instead of looking just past her. "Oh." She frowns, thoughtful. "You said it was a useful spell. What good is being invisible for two seconds?"

"It's a delicate spell, and one that needs your focus and attention to maintain. It's not like the others you've cast, that only need to create a single, instantaneous effect. If you want to keep the spell working, you need to concentrate on it. Invisibility is a difficult illusion to manifest in the first place, and harder still to maintain. The spell will dissipate, if you give it half a chance. But if you hold that focus, you should be able to keep it going for a good amount of time."

Quil chews on her lip, thinking over all of that. "But it did work? I was invisible?"

"It worked beautifully. You're a natural, Quil."

She shakes her head, breathing a huff of disbelieving laughter, because everything she's ever done with her magic has been hard work, except the things she hadn't wanted to do at all. But she doesn't say so, just gets up to her feet and gives Allan the space he needs while he stands as well. "Thank you for helping me."

His smile is warm and gentle, not the fierce, sharp delight of earlier but something deeper now, and steadier. "I'm glad to." He starts toward the cottage, and she falls into step easily at his side. "And I meant what I said. You need only let me know, if you decide there's something else you'd like my assistance in figuring out how to do, or if you want to look through my spellbook again." He laughs a little, his tail sweeping in a wide, easy arc behind them with simple happiness. "Or if you want to talk theory some more. I'm always up for that, and the others will probably thank you for saving them from being subjected to it."

"I want to know all of it," she says. "Anything you're willing teach me."

He turns his head to glance sidelong at her and his face is glowing, like there isn't anything she could have said that would have made him gladder, and they finish the short walk together back to the cottage in companionable silence.

*

The next morning, Quil wraps up in her quilt and picks her way through the others, making her way outside as has started to become habit, but instead of making straight for the stone in the woods, she hesitates and lingers by her hive, which is just starting to hum as the bees rise with the sun. She says hello to them, quietly, so as not to disturb them, and then finds her way over to the other garden patch, where the flowers are taller and the buds look like they're ready to burst into bloom at any moment. She brushes her hand across the tops of them, watching them bob and dance at her touch, and knows that they'll be ready for harvesting soon. If not today then tomorrow, and she doesn't understand why the thought of that makes her feel hollow and aching.

She _knows_ why, knows it's because once the flowers are harvested Iain's going to leave for his own cottage, and Kal with him no doubt, and there will be more elbow room for all of them when they all find their way back to the cottage to eat supper together, and she won't have to be quite so careful about where she places her hooves when she picks her way through the makeshift beds in the morning, but she doesn't understand why that thought hurts so much.

She finds her way out to her stone eventually, settles down onto it cross-legged and then fusses with the way the quilt is draped around her shoulders and how it covers her lap, plucking at the edge of it and gnawing on her lip until she has to force herself to stop, lest she bite it raw.

She draws her magic up and casts it out, but when she feels it catch and pull tight, she hesitates again, just holding onto the thread of it. She knows all the things she ought to say, all the things that others would have her tell Phi, but the storm of her own emotions rolls through her, and she's lost in the center of it.

_Don't you get lonely, or frightened? When I left my family, it killed me, but I knew they were safer. How can you bear this?_

It's not what she meant to say, not what she should have said, but it's done and there's nothing for it. She shuts her eyes and breathes through it, and waits for Phi's answer, and waits and waits and waits.

It comes, eventually, Phi's voice in her mind, soft like a whispered confession. _Yes. Of course. But this is to keep my family safe too. It helps to remember that. Are you all right? You sound upset._

It makes Quil give a wet, choking laugh. She presses her face into her hands and breathes against her palms and is selfishly glad that she can't answer Phi for another day, because she doesn't have any idea how to do so.

*

Terry gives her a long, searching look when she comes back to the cottage, but he doesn't ask, and so she doesn't have to figure out how to answer him. She helps Lanra with the cooking because it's something to keep her hands busy, joins Iain when he returns to the garden patch to pour his magic into it, and when he opens his eyes from the spell and sees the riot of colorful flowers that have bloomed before him, he gets a thoughtful look and then nods and says, "I think that should be more than enough for what I need, and they're young still, so they'll be more potent. Will you help me harvest them?"

She swallows against the sharp-edged knot of emotion lodged in her throat and nods, because what else can she do? Trying to hold onto him will keep him close, but it won't keep him safe. It won't make any of them safer, it'll only mean they won't have his potions to fortify them when they go to face Seath. It'll put all of them in so much more danger.

It takes time, carefully clipping each flower just beneath its head, and the leaves, for those plants whose leaves will be helpful in the potions. Quil gets one of his bags from inside the cottage and helps him pack them into it, careful to make sure nothing will get crushed or bruised while he travels.

"Thank you," he says to her quietly when they've finished, when the colorful garden is as barren as though it were winter, instead of early summer, when everything ought to be bright and vibrant.

She nods without speaking, even manages to dredge up a smile, though it doesn't make him look reassured in the slightest.

He pulls her into a fierce hug, startling her, and holds on until the tension melts out of her and she brings her arms around him and hugs him back. Only then does he set her back, his hands on her shoulders and his expression soft and earnest. "Be well," he says, like they're parting for more than a week or less, like they're not going to be a few hours' walk through the woods from one another. "Don't let my siblings do anything stupid without us."

She laughs despite herself. "That might be asking more of me than I'm capable of."

He sighs, looking fond and exasperated at once. "It might be," he agrees. He lets her go, and steps back. "Lanra's got a sweet tooth, for all he'll bluster and deny it if you tell him I said so. Don't let him eat all your honey before you've had a chance to bring me some." He grins, bright and laughing. "I won't ask to get to have the first taste of it, not when you and Terry have put more work into it than I have. Just don't let me be the last."

"You'll be the third," she promises, and hugs him again. "And I won't let Lanra have any of it, not from the first harvest. It's for the potions."

Iain nods, satisfied, and then picks up the bag and squares his shoulders and goes inside the cottage, where his entrance is greeted by cries of dismay from everyone, who realize what the harvested flowers mean just as much as Quil did.

She hangs to the back while Iain and Kal both make the rounds, hugging everyone and wishing them good-bye, exchanging low admonishments to travel safe, to be well, to send word immediately if there's any news from Phi.

Kal comes to her last of all of them, takes her hands in his and grins down at her. And it wasn't so long ago that she might have been anxious to be on the receiving end of a mouthful of bared fangs, but she knows him now, knows how to read the angle of his browridges and how wide or narrow his slitted pupils are, and she knows there's only fondness in his smile as he looks down at her. "Be well, Quil. Be happy." He laughs a little, quietly, and pats her cheek. "I'm glad I didn't get the chance to kill you, when I found you in the woods. You've been good for our family. I'm glad to have you in it."

There isn't anything she can say to that, isn't any way she can acknowledge being named a part of their family, that isn't going to make her cry, right there in front of everyone, so she just swallows hard twice and nods, steps in and hugs him, her arms wrapped tight around his back. "Thank you," she whispers, and if her voice wavers a little on the words, he doesn't mention it.

He does set her back, though, and gives her a puzzled little smile. "Thank _you._ For bringing our sister back to us, even this much. For-- For everything." He releases her and steps back before she loses the fight against tears after all. "We'll see you soon," he says, and it's directed to all of them but his gaze is on her, like he thinks she needs the most reassuring.

He probably isn't wrong. She draws a deep, unsteady breath and wraps her arms about her middle, for strength, but she doesn't fall apart, not even when they all tumble outside to see Kal and Iain off, pressed together at the cottage doorway and waving and shouting last-minute admonitions until the woods have swallowed them up and they can't see or hear them any longer.

A hand lands on her shoulder, making her jump. She turns and finds Lanra behind her, smiling down at her like he hasn't noticed the turmoil she's in, but there's sympathy and understanding in his eyes that steadies her. It helps, just to be understood. "Come on," he says. "We need to talk about our supper. I saw you sneak some sorrel into the pot while you thought I wasn't looking and now the whole house smells twice as amazing, damn you. I wouldn't have expected those flavors to work together."

Quil returns the smile, recognizing it for the gift it is, the offer of escape. "My mother loved sorrel. She used it in nearly everything. It's more flexible than people think." And she lets him urge her back inside, lets him draw her into a conversation about sorrel's many and varied uses that distracts her from how the absence of Iain and Kal from the household feels like a tangible emptiness.

*

"We're going to need to get you a shawl," Terry says, as she wraps up in the quilt before making her way through the maze of sleeping bodies and blankets to the door, same as she has nearly every morning.

She startles a little and glances at him, sees him sitting half-upright in bed with an arm braced behind himself, his other hand scrubbing over his face and pushing his hair back off his brow.

"You don't have to," she answers him, hushed so as not to disturb the others. "I don't mind it." She hesitates, frowning a little. "Unless you mean that you'd rather I not drag your blankets off through the woods every morning, which-- I can leave it." She starts to loosen her grip on the quilt, letting it drop back down to puddle around her feet. "It's not _that_ cold out."

"Gods," Terry breathes, and swings his legs over the edge of the bed to sit up fully before he catches her arm with one hand and the quilt with the other, lifting it up off the floor. "Yes it is, and that's not what I meant." He pulls the quilt around her shoulders again and holds it there, the edges gathered before her like he doesn't trust her to keep it in place by herself anymore. "Use the blanket, Quil, please. It's what it's made for."

She covers his hands with one of her own, clutching the blanket closed around her shoulders so he doesn't have to, and she reaches with her other to clasp his arm and give it a gentle squeeze. "Go back to sleep," she says softly. "You hate being up this early. I'll tell you, if she says anything important."

He looks like he'll protest, his throat working like he's just trying to figure out the right thing to say to assuage and convince her. She lets go of his arm and presses her hand to his cheek instead, briefly. It's coarse with stubble and scratches her palm a little, and his eyes flicker shut a moment before he draws a deep breath and meets her gaze.

"Please," she says.

His brows knit -- consternation rather than true unhappiness, she thinks -- so she takes it for acceptance and steps back. He lifts his hand so that his fingers graze across the back of her hand as it falls away from his cheek. "Take Allan with you. In case--"

"I'm not waking Allan up this early." She shifts back another step, glancing behind her to make sure she's not about to put her hoof down on anyone. "I didn't mean to wake you up, either. Go back to sleep, I'll be fine. I'm getting good at this spell."

That, inexplicably, makes his expression soften, makes him smile warm enough that it reaches all the way up to his eyes. "You were already good." He pulls his legs back up onto the bed, under his blankets. He doesn't lay down, though, but props his back against the headboard and shoves his pillow up behind him. "Go on, then. Give Phi my love, if you're able. And tell me what she says afterwards, whether it's important or not."

Quil looks down at the floor, at her hooves peeking out from beneath the quilt's edge, and sighs a little. But she knows when a battle's been won as much as it's going to, and she can see well enough that it's as much of a concession as she's going to get from him. So she just nods and pulls the blanket tighter around herself, lifting it up so it won't drag and pick up dirt from the ground, and steps outside into the morning light.

She takes her time making her way out into the trees, letting her thoughts settle, letting the misty woods and the cool touch of the air on her cheeks and the quiet and stillness around her soothe her, so that when she does sit down on her stone and adjust the blanket around herself, she feels steady enough to reach for her magic without fearing that it'll lash out of her control the moment she touches it.

_Not really, no,_ she thinks, and hopes that Phi remembers the question that she's answering. _Iain and Kal went home. I shouldn't feel lonely, there's still so many people here. But I didn't want them to go._

It's such a foolish waste of her spell, of her limited ability to communicate with Phi, and she shuts her eyes and holds that thread of magic between them, and waits for Phi to say so, or to brush aside Quil's turmoil and to speak instead about strategy or safety or try once again to offer reconnaissance. She's not unfeeling, Quil knows that well enough from traveling with her, from how desperately her family loves her. But she is the sort to do what must be done no matter how she feels about it, and Quil expects that from her now, waits for it, hopes desperately that it will help bolster her to do the same.

_Talk to Terry,_ Phi says, her voice gentle in Quil's mind through the connection between them. _He's good at reassuring. But there's no point in thinking you shouldn't feel something. How you feel is how you feel._

The connection breaks, and Quil takes a breath that's thick and wet and shudders through her. It would have been easier, she thinks, if Phi _had_ focused on the work at hand instead of being so kind about Quil's unhappiness. It would have made it easier for Quil to do the same, and to do what needs to be done, instead of feeling even more lost and alone than she did when she actually _was._

She picks herself up off the stone eventually and makes her way back to the cottage. And when she lets herself back inside, careful to be quiet, she finds Terry still sitting up in bed, watching her quietly, waiting for her. Her breath shudders through her again, and her resolve wavers and then fails her entirely.

She climbs up onto the bed with him, sits beside him leaning back against the headboard with her knees pulled up and her arms hugged around them, the blanket hanging like a cloak around her. Terry doesn't protest, just gives her a startled look before sliding over to make room for her, and the surprise on his face shifts towards concern as he watches her, as she wraps in on herself and tries to remember how to breathe steadily.

"Will you tell me?" he asks her eventually, when she can't figure out how to bring herself to speak.

She nods, and swallows against the thickness in her throat. "She said I should talk to you," she whispers, voice soft so it won't carry and disturb the others. She stares at her knees as she speaks, but she doesn't miss the way Terry startles on the edge of her vision, how he blinks and stares at her, starts to speak and then stops himself twice. "She said you're good at reassuring."

He makes a low, hurt sound, reaches out to her and catches at her hand. She doesn't unwrap her arms from around her knees, so he just holds it where it is, the backs of his knuckles pressing into her shin a little, his fingers sure and steady where they wrap through hers. "I can try," he says. "What-- Why do you need reassuring? What's wrong?"

She gives a wet laugh and shakes her head. "Everything?" But Phi told her to, and that's not helpful. She rubs her cheek against her arm and tries again. "I didn't want Iain and Kal to leave, and it's stupid. They're not that far away, and it's not for that long. And there's still like, five _hundred_ people here in this house, I can have company any time I want, so I don't know why I feel so lonely and... sad."

Terry makes another soft, wordless sound and his hand tightens on hers. His thumb sweeps back and forth across her knuckles in a soothing motion. "It's not stupid to miss people you care about, or to be sad when they leave. And..." He hesitates long enough that she glances up at him, wondering why. His brows are knit and he looks reluctant, almost, until he lets out a long, long breath and says, "It's not stupid to be afraid, either."

The bottom drops out of her stomach, and she clenches her hand around his. "We have to do this," she says, her voice barely a whisper. "We _have_ to. For Phi. For everybody."

He nods once, carefully. "We have good reasons for it. But we're still facing the prospect of standing against a dragon, and you've suffered at his hands more than most. You know what's at stake. It's not cowardly to be afraid of what's coming." His lips twitch, a faint hint of a smile. "Some might call it sensible."

"I'm not afraid for myself. But I'm terrified for the rest of you."

Terry's smile is so, so sad. "You might try being a little afraid for yourself." He lifts a hand to her cheek, presses it there briefly before abruptly pulling it away, like she's somehow burned him even now. "It would give us all a little extra peace of mind, I think. None of us want to see you hurt, any more than you want us to be."

She plucks at a snagged thread in her skirt, worrying it between her fingers. "How do you do what you need to, when you're terrified of it?" _Tell me how to have the strength to watch you all ready yourselves for a fight that might kill you, and not want to drag you all so far away that Seath will never be able to find you, no matter how fast or how far he flies?_

"I try to remember why I'm doing it," he says after a moment. "Usually, it's something I fear even more. That makes it easier, sometimes, if I don't think of it as doing something frightening, but of trying to prevent something I'm terrified of."

"Like something happening to Phi," she says softly.

Terry inclines his head in a nod. "Among other things." He shifts around, settling in close at her side, his shoulder pressing comfortingly to hers, his side pressed to hers. His hand doesn't loosen on hers at all, and she's grateful for it, grateful that he doesn't do anything but draw her in closer, when she leans her head sideways to lay on his shoulder. "I love Phi so much it staggers me, and I am very, very afraid for her safety. But it's not the only thing I fear. I'm afraid for everyone in our family, and what might happen to them when we walk into this fight. I'm afraid of how bad it might be, but I'm more afraid of how much worse it might be if I don't stand at their side, and lend my blade to theirs, and fight to protect and defend them." His hand tightens in hers, tight enough to ache. It feels steadying, feels grounding, and she clings to him like he's the only thing keeping her from flying apart into pieces. She thinks maybe he is. "I'm afraid for you," he admits softly, and she startles enough to lift her head and blink at him. "And of what Seath might intend with you, if we don't keep him from it. I can fight for all of that, for the things and the people that I care about most. Even against an ancient, evil dragon. Even knowing the price I might face, that any of us might."

Quil's quiet for a long moment, listening to the mis-matched rhythm of half a dozen people breathing around her. "I've never been very good at helping," she admits, faint enough she's not even sure he can hear it. "I just make things worse."

Terry sucks in a sharp breath. "That's _not true."_

She shuts her eyes and holds onto him. It's kind of him to say, even if it's wrong. Oh, it makes her heart glad to hear it, even though she knows he's being more generous than she deserves. "I nearly killed my mother and sister. I nearly killed _you._ I'm not--"

"Would you like me to recite a list of my own sins? Should I tell you all the times I've hurt someone I didn't mean to, or nearly did? No one's perfect, Quil. It's not fair to hold yourself to that standard. You deserve better than that. You deserve the same kindness and compassion that you're so quick to extend to everyone else."

She leans forward, pressing her brow against her knees, and breathes raggedly there for a moment. "Well," she says at length, choked. "She wasn't wrong. You are good at this."

"Am I?" A hand settles on the back of her head, stroking lightly across her hair. "Then why doesn't it seem like it's helped?"

"That's not your fault."

He's quiet for long enough that she thinks she must have finally left him at a loss. But a moment later he shifts, the hand on her head dropping down to press warm against her calf as he leans across the bed, and she lifts her head enough to watch him, puzzled, as he stretches sideways and roots one-handed through the drawer of the nightstand, until at length he pulls a brush out and straightens, keeps one hand curved on her calf and his gaze steady and solemn on hers as he gestures with the brush with the other. "May I?"

She blinks at him, taken aback enough that it's a moment before she realizes his meaning. Then, she draws in a sharp breath and hugs her arms more closely around her legs. "You don't have to."

He smiles at her, lopsided and gentle. "That's not what I asked."

She swallows and stares at him, unable to bring herself to answer.

"I do this for Phi sometimes. I won't pull at your hair, I promise." His smile twitches a little brighter, his whole face lightening at the mention of Phi, and then it fades back to something soft with sentiment. "Sometimes, when there's nothing you can do to fix a problem for someone, it can help just to take care of them in some small way."

"You don't have to take care of me." Her voice is thin, threadbare. She tucks her face inside her crossed arms, just looking out at him across them.

"I'd like to."

She makes a half-broken noise and turns her face down into her arms fully, hiding in the dark circle of them.

He's quiet a moment longer, and then he ventures, tentative, "You don't have to say yes. I don't mean to upset you. I only thought it might be something that would help you feel better. If you don't want—"

"Please," she says, faint, spoken into the curve of her arm, and she feels like she had in the woods with him, when he'd offered her a hug and she thought she'd fall to pieces with how much she hurt for wanting it.

He hesitates a little longer, then moves carefully, drawing her braid forward over her shoulder and setting to work untying the end. His fingers are gentle as he separates the strands, undoing the braid, and then he takes up the brush and begins at the end of one section of her hair.

He doesn't pull her hair, not once. He's patient and methodical about it, brushing her hair out until it hangs loose and smooth about her shoulders, and he doesn't shy away from her horns but takes care to brush around them, so everything hangs as it ought. It's all she can do to focusing on breathing, on remembering to breathe, on not succumbing to tears at the simple, deliberate care he takes with her.

When he's finished and her hair is loose and warm about her, no more knots or tangles left to work out, he keeps brushing her hair for a while longer. His movements are steady and smooth, and the rhythm of it makes it easier for her to catch her breath.

She doesn't tell him to stop. She thinks, if he waited for her to do so, they might never move from this moment. But eventually he sets the brush down, and sighs a little, and his fingers stroke through her hair before he tucks a strand behind her ears and then lays his hands in his lap. "I could braid it back, if you like."

"You don't have to." She doesn't lift her head, just speaks softly into her arms, breathing deep and carefully.

"I could," he says again, with quiet insistence.

She can't bring herself to refuse a second time. When the quiet stretches between them and she doesn't break it, he curves a hand over her shoulder and exerts a gentle pressure. "Turn around, then, and I'll do it up for you."

She lets him guide her around until her back is to him and he's sitting just behind her. She can feel the slight press of his knees against her hips, the warmth of his hands on her shoulders. She moves her tail out of the way for him, brings it up onto her lap where he can't see the way the end curls and unfurls and curls again.

His hands are steady and gentle as he moves them through her hair, and his voice is low when he tells her how to move to assist him, to look up, or down, or to one side or the other. But otherwise he's quiet, just the steady glide of his hands through her hair, the slight tug as he works her hair up into a secure braid.

He's more elaborate with it than she would have been, if she were doing it for herself. She's never bothered with anything more than a simple braid done over her shoulder, quick enough and perfectly functional. But he starts at her temple with just a thin, fine braid, and draws more strands into it from her hairline with each twist, so that by the time he's done the same on both sides, all of her hair has been caught up in the braids, and he wraps the two around each other at her nape.

It feels strange to have the weight of her hair sitting there, instead of hanging loose, but it feels good, feels secure. She tips her head from side to side, testing it, but nothing feels like it's going to fall down or come loose. It feels practical and useful, but it feels pretty, too, and she has to clear her throat twice before she can manage to say, "Thank you."

He rests his hands on her shoulders, a slight weight, but the warmth of him through her shift feels good, too. "You're welcome," he says, and sounds like he's having just as much trouble speaking as she is. "I was thinking of showing you something today, if you're up for it. It'll be good to have your hair up, if you are." There's the fleeting warmth of a touch at the back of her neck, gone just as quick as it came, before she can do more than catch her breath at it. "And if not, it'll still help keep it from getting tangled."

She leans forward against her thighs and smiles into the circle of her arms, and doesn't say, _Yes, I'm familiar with how braids can help to tame long hair, I've lived with it all my life after all._ "What do you want to show me?"

"Something useful, I hope. Something helpful." He shifts behind her, drawing back, and that makes it easier for her to unfold, to stand and turn at the bedside and face him.

He slides over to the edge of the bed, readying to stand as well, then considers her a moment, his eyes narrowed in thought. "You'll have to wear my coat," he says after a moment, decisive. "The blanket will only hinder you. It'll be a bit broad in the shoulders, but we'll make do."

"What'll you wear, then?"

He grins at her, his smile a bright flash in the morning light. "I'll be fine. You get cold easier than most do, I've noticed. Allan's the same," he adds, before she can decide whether she ought to take umbrage with that or not. "Anyway, we'll both be working up a sweat quick enough. But I don't want you to be cold, until then."

She blinks at him, a little taken aback. "Well, now you _have_ to tell me, before my curiosity does me in."

He just smiles up at her a moment before he gets off the bed, crosses the room to retrieve his coat from the hook it's hanging on by the door, and comes back with it between his hands. He holds it up for her so that it's a simple thing for her to turn her back to him and slide her arms inside.

His knuckles brush the back of her neck as he adjusts the lay of the collar, then he gives her shoulders a squeeze before he drops his hands away. "There. How does it feel?"

She turns to face him. There's laughter lurking in her voice as she says, "I think _a bit broad_ might have been an understatement." She rolls the cuffs back twice until the sleeves hang at her wrists where they ought to, and it helps, but it's still far too large on her. She feels as though she could drown in it. "It is warm, though."

Terry smiles, pleased by that. "Good." He stoops to take up his belt from where he'd left it, hanging from the footboard of the bed. "Let's go outside. The others won't thank us for doing this over top of them while they sleep."

She lets him usher her out, but glances back to him over her shoulder once they're out on the cottage's front step. "What is _this,_ exactly?"

"I want to teach you to fight," he says and, with his belt settled around his hips, draws a dagger from one of the sheaths at his hip and holds it out to her, hilt-first. "The basics of it, anyway. And to defend yourself."

Quil looks from Terry's face to the pommel of the dagger and back again, her mouth gone suddenly dry as sun-bleached bone. "You can't possibly think you're going to be able to teach me in a week how to use that well enough to wield it against a _dragon._ "

His smile flashes across his face, crooked but genuine. "I'm not expecting to win you over from your magic and turn you into a fighter instead, no. But I-- I know your magic frightens you, sometimes, and I thought you might like to have an option that doesn't require it, should the situation arise." His fingers tighten a little around the dagger's hilt. "And if, if you should find yourself in a position where you can't use your magic, if you've exhausted it for the day or you don't trust it or-- I don't want you to be defenseless." He gestures with the dagger, pushing it towards her when she still hasn't reached to take it from him. "Will you let me teach you what I can?"

She lets out a long, slow breath. "I'm not strong like you are, or Lanra, or... most of you, really." She lifts a hand to forestall him when he frowns and looks like he means to speak. "I'm _not._ Don't you think, if anyone gets close enough for me to be able to reach them with this"--she lays her hand over Terry's, not taking the blade from him yet, but holding it with him--"then I'm already doomed?"

His mouth goes tight for a moment, his expression grim. "Not as much as you would be if you knew nothing of how to wield it."

She nods once, and takes hold of the dagger's hilt so that he can release it. He drops his hand back to his side and watches as she twists it about and hefts it, testing the weight of it in her palm. "All right," she says, and looks up at him to meet his gaze. "Then teach me what I need to know."

*

They spend an hour out in front of the cottage while Terry shows her how to hold the dagger, how to grip it so that it won't slip when she uses it, so she won't cut herself on it.

"Good," he says with a nod when she's satisfied him, and he considers her a moment. Then he steps back, crouches a little like he's bracing himself, and holds his hands up between them. "All right, try to hit me," he says. "And then we'll go through it again slowly, so we can see where your technique can be refined."

Quil straightens, hands dropping down to her sides, her stomach all at once wrapped up in a queasy knot. "I am not going to try to _stab_ you."

He looks startled at first, and then he smiles a little. "There's no real way to learn but through doing. You won't hurt me," he adds, and she scowls, uncertain whether she wants to be offended by his certainty or outraged by his insistence.

"This blade is sharp. You can't know that, not for sure." She sets the dagger down in the grass, since he's still wearing the sheath for it on his belt, and crosses her arms over her chest. "I won't hurt you," she says, in an entirely different tone than his.

He strands up from his crouch, rolls his shoulders for a moment and shakes them out. "I'd give you a blunted blade if we had one, but we didn't anticipated the need. And there's not much point in teaching these movements to you without a dagger in your hand. You need to get used to what it's like to do them with the weight of it, the balance of it. I want you to be prepared, Quil, and going through the motions isn't going to do that."

"What if I cut you? There has to be some way that doesn't involve using a _live blade._ You can't tell me they gave _you_ a sharpened axe, the first time they had you try swinging it at someone."

Something complicated happens to Terry's expression, a shifting series of emotions that Quil doesn't know how to interpret. It settles, in the end, on a thoughtful look. "You might be surprised," he says at last. "But I think there's something we can do to protect me a little better, if it'll ease your mind. Or rather, there's something Allan can do."

"A spell? Like the armor one I learned?"

He laughs a little. "You'll have to ask him. Stay here," he says. "Pick that dagger up off of the ground, it won't do you any good down there. I won't be a moment."

She nods and does so, and tries not to listen too closely as he moves behind her, opens the cottage door and, judging by how well she can still make out his voice, doesn't go much beyond the doorway to say, "Allan, have you done your studying for the morning yet?"

The response he gets is indistinct, too garbled for Quil to make out, and Terry lowers his voice to continue the conversation.

After a moment, Allan says something that makes Terry laugh a little. "Good. Come on out here, will you, and help us out for a moment?"

Another reply, just as impossible to decipher as the first, and a moment later Terry comes back to stand with her, Allan following close behind him.

"Morning," he calls to Quil in greeting, and then turns to face Terry. "All right, hold still and let me work."

Quil watches, curious, as Allan recites an incantation, his hands sweeping through the air in a pattern to match the words. It's not one she knows of, not one that they've studied together, but she can see how it builds the magic up within him, until his hands seem to almost glow with it. And then he reaches to Terry, wraps the fingers of one hand around his wrist where he can touch skin to skin, and the magic flows from him into Terry, washes across him like a wave that leaves his skin a little grey and strangely-textured everywhere it touches.

"There you are," Allan says, his voice warm with satisfaction. "That'll last you an hour, so long as no one manages to break my concentration while we're eating breakfast. Unless Lanra decides to fight me over the last of the blackberry preserves, I imagine I'm probably safe." He turns back to the cottage, but drops a hand onto Quil's shoulder and gives it a squeeze as he passes her.

Quil turns to watch him until the cottage door shuts behind him, then looks back to Terry. "What did he do to you?"

"He calls it Stoneskin. May I?" He holds a hand out to her, palm up, and she lays the hilt of the dagger into it the same way he had with her. He shifts his grip on it once she's released it, lifts it and his other hand, and makes her jolt with alarm when he pushes the point of the blade against the heel of his palm.

"Don't--" She moves forward instinctively to stop him. But when he turns his hand out to show her his palm, his skin is unmarked. There's no blood, no cut, not even a scratch, and she pulls herself up short and blinks at it.

"It won't keep any blade from cutting me," he says, offering the dagger back to her. "But it helps. It'll provide some protection and I hope, for you, some peace of mind."

She considers the dagger now that it's back in her hand, tests the edge of the blade with a nail and sees for herself how deadly-sharp it is. Sharp enough that it absolutely should have hurt Terry, if it weren't for the magic settled over him.

"I promise," he adds. "When you reach the point where it seems like you might be able to hurt me, even through the spell, I'll go back inside and put some armor on before we continue."

_When_ , he says, not _if,_ and there's nothing patronizing about it. He says it like he's sure it's only a matter of time before she's able to do so, not at all like he's humoring her for even thinking she might be capable of it.

She lets out a breath, long and slow and deliberate, and shifts the dagger in her hand until she's gripping it, not just holding it. "All right," she says, solemn. "But if I so much as nick you, I'm making you let Gari heal you, and _you_ can explain to her why."

"It's a deal," he agrees, just as somber, still not making fun of her or making light of her. And then he settles back into his half-crouched stance, ready for her. "Aim here," he says, and pats one hand against his abdomen. "There's not as many ways to instantly kill a person, as opposed to higher up on the chest, but everything's nice and soft down here, and you won't have to worry about the ribs catching the blade and getting in your way. If you're in dire enough straits that you have to resort to fighting like this, up close, you go for the easy targets, okay? This isn't the moment to try for anything fancy. I promise, a knife to the gut will be distraction enough for any man."

She considers how he's standing, how he has his hands up and ready for her. "What about for a dragon?" she counters and steps in, one arm coming up to try to knock his hands aside, making room for her to get in close.

He catches her arm with one hand, sweeps it aside so she can't leverage her weight against it. She brings her other hand up at the same time, the one with the dagger, driving the point up towards his stomach and trying so, so hard not to think about what might happen if he doesn't stop her, if Allan's spell doesn't hold.

Strong fingers circle her wrist before she can do more than pierce the fabric of his shirt on the tip of the blade, holding her fast. And Terry, with the point of his own dagger an inch away from sinking into his gut, looks at her and laughs like he's delighted, like he's having the time of his life.

"Good." He releases her, and she steps back at once. "You've got good instincts. That was a clever move." And then his expression sobers some, and he looks at her like doing so is painful somehow, and he sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. "Please," he says, startling her with his earnestness. "Please, try not to get in a knife fight with a dragon. If it comes to it, of course, it's always going to be better to fight than to not. But that's a point of desperation I'd just as soon you never had to reach."

"I'm not looking to pick a fight with him," she says softly. "But he wanted to eat my heart. It may not be entirely up to me."

He smiles at her, infinitely sad. "We're going to do everything we can to protect you from that. You know that, don't you?"

Her mouth presses flat and thin for a moment, the tip of her tail flicking through the grasses around their feet. "I know," she says eventually. "Can you show me a better way to block you? You said it was clever, but you stopped me so easily."

He nods, and smiles, and she doesn't think any of the sadness goes away, exactly, but at least it subsides enough not to dominate his expression. "You aren't wrong, about not being as strong as Lanra or I are. But you're small and you're fast, and that's its own advantage. You're not going to be able to hold your own in a test of strength, so the trick is to never let it become one. If you're inside my guard before I have a chance to block you from it--" He steps towards her, steps in close, so that when he lifts his hands back to the same, readied position he'd been in earlier, they're behind her. His arms are on either side of her and he's standing above her, and he's very close, his face is very close.

She's frozen in place, and he's motionless too, looking down at her for a moment just like that. He clears his throat and finishes, softer, "It's much harder like this to pull you back, than to keep you from getting inside my guard in the first place." He drops one hand and covers hers with it, guides it forward so that, even as close as they're standing, the dagger is between them, its point just resting beneath his sternum. If this were a fight and not practice, it wouldn't take more than half an instant, a flick of her wrist, to drive the blade up and in. She could pierce straight to his heart like this and he's right -- he doesn't have a good vantage, this way, to stop her.

She steps back abruptly, hot all at once, flushed from the moment, from the dizzying thought of how easy it would be to hurt him and how complete his trust is, that he never hesitated to put her there, inside his guard, close to his most vulnerable places.

"Okay." She clears her throat. "Show me how?"

He nods and smiles, and it makes it easier for her to fill her lungs with air and shake off the moment. "The best approach is going to going to depend on the situation, of course. But in one like this, where your opponent is prepared for you, try to duck down, come in low rather than head-on." He reaches towards her and thumps a hand against her shoulder. "Try to use your weight, in conjunction with your strength and your speed, to get past my defenses."

She tries, ducking down and throwing her shoulder into him so that she connects with his ribs, instead of just being caught by his hands. And of course, he's expecting her to do just that, and he catches the hand with the dagger by the wrist again. But he still stumbles a half-step back beneath her weight, and he's beaming when he says, " _Good._ Perfect." His hands close on her shoulders and he sets her back from him. "Here, give me your wrist again. I'm going to show you how to break out of a hold like this, and then I want you to try both together."

They practice for the hour, until Quil's breathless and warm, her fingers aching a little from gripping the dagger so tight for so long. When the magic on Terry shimmers and then falls away, she steps back, catching her breath, blade held safely down at her side.

Terry's face is alight, his grin irrepressible. He holds his hands up between them, as though in surrender. "All right, all right," he says, laughing. "A promise is a promise, and I don't want to have to face Gari's disapproval. Do you want to try something else, for a change of pace?"

"What do you have in mind?"

"Something you can use _before_ anyone gets up close and personal with you." He holds his hand out between them, a silent request for the dagger, and she places it into his palm. He grasps onto it, grins at her, and then spins and throws it, spinning end over end until it buries itself solidly in the trunk of a nearby tree.

Quil gives a shock of startled laughter. "All right," she says. "I can try." And she follows when he gestures her over closer to the tree, and shoos her into position standing just before it, a few strides away.

"Obviously," he says, grunting a little as he works to free the dagger from the tree, "you have to be judicious in how often you do this, or you'll run out of weapons very quickly." The blade slides free and he makes a sharp, victorious sound and comes to stand with her, beside her and just a little behind. "But it can be helpful, to have a means of encouraging someone not to get any closer to you than they already are."

Quil nods and eyes the distance between her and the tree, adjusts her grip on the dagger so that she's holding it by the pommel, and throws it.

It tumbles through the air, and it looks much like it had when Terry threw it, but the side of the blade hits the tree first and it clatters to the ground instead of burying into the wood. Quil pulls a face, while Terry hands her another dagger from his belt. "Just keep working at it. You'll get a feel for it, the more you do it."

It's honestly a relief just to have a task to occupy her that doesn't involve aiming the point of a blade at Terry, and it's easier to focus on it when she isn't spending half her attention on making very, very sure that she isn't about to accidentally hurt him. By the time he tires of fetching the daggers, trotting back and forth between her and the tree, bringing the weapons back to her, even as the distance she's throwing and the distance he has to cover increases, they've spent most of the day at it and Quil is tired, breathless and winded. Terry himself looks worn and satisfied by it, and he slides his daggers back into the sheaths on his belt and then flops onto his back on the grass and reaches a hand out towards her, and doesn't relent until she comes and puts her hand in his, and lets him pull her down to sit in the grass beside him, arms looped around her legs and strands of hair that escaped from her braids plastered with sweat to her cheeks and the back of her neck.

"You like this," she observes quietly, watching him sidelong.

He turns his head to look at her. "Were you not enjoying yourself?" His expression clouds with consternation, and he starts to push himself up on an elbow. "Quil, I want to help you, but you can't let me bully you into something just because I'm enthusiastic. You could have said so, at any time. You wouldn't have hurt my feelings."

She pulls a face and waves a hand at him, and when that seems to do little to allay his worry, she pulls on his hand that she's still holding, until he relents and lays onto his back again, though now he's frowning up at the sky and the treetops above them, looking troubled.

"Stop that. You didn't bully me. I didn't hate it -- though I'll admit I liked it better when it didn't involve you standing at the business end of the dagger. It's just..." She gestures helplessly. "You _like_ it."

"I do," he admits softly. "It's fun. It's always been fun to me, to test yourself. To test yourself against a friend, and let them do the same with you. To spur one another on to be better. It's fun watching someone pick a skill up, too, watching and helping them learn and improve." He slips his fingers through hers, and his thumb brushes idly back and forth across her knuckles. "Phi and I do this for one another, you know. Or, well. Not so much lately, of course. But when we have the chance to. It can be fun to spar with someone you know well, someone you can trust."

Quil's nerves prickle beneath his steady, sweeping touch, and she thinks about that, and about the fact that he may not know her well, but he's as much as said that he trusts her. The thought of it is no less staggering than it had been earlier in the day, standing in the loose circle of his arms, watching him watch her with the point of a dagger at his chest and not even the slightest trace of concern in his eyes.

"I liked throwing them," she says at last, quietly. "I suppose I'd have liked the sparring better if I trusted myself more." Terry's fingers tighten around hers. "I was very afraid I'd hurt you."

"I wouldn't have let that happen."

She laughs a little, quietly. "That hardly inspires confidence in my abilities. If you can stop me so easily, can be so sure of your ability to do so, then what's the point? Seath's older than you, and faster, and stronger. If I can't hurt you--"

Terry rolls onto his side toward her, propped up on an elbow. "You're not going to be able to kill a dragon with a dagger," he says. " _I'm_ probably not going to be able to kill a dragon with a dagger, and I've been training with them for years. The point isn't to teach you how to kill him in the course of a day. The point is to give you a means of protecting or defending yourself, in a situation where you might otherwise have no defenses left to you." He turns her hand over in his, and brings his other to cover it, clasping hers between them both. "You don't have to kill him for this to have been useful. You don't even have to hurt him. All you have to do is keep him too busy fending you off to be able to hurt _you,_ until one of us can get to you and help you."

It helps, a little, even if it leaves her more than a bit chagrined to have been working at something for the best part of the day and to know that it might ultimately be meaningless. Still, it helps her breathe a little easier, and she squeezes Terry's hand in thanks.

"Your strength is still your magic, and it's going to remain that way. I'm not trying to win you over to weapons fighting here," he says, and she's not looking directly at him but even so, she can hear the way his voice warms with a smile, and she tightens her hand on his again, glad for it. "I just want to give you a few extra tools, just in case you find yourself in a situation where you need them."

She nods. "Thank you." And when she tries to offer him the dagger back, he shakes his head and rolls onto his back again.

"Keep it. You know the weight and balance of that one already." He releases her hand just long enough to unclip the dagger's sheath from his belt and pass it over to her, and then he slips his hand right back into hers, easily, like it belongs there.

Quil looks down at the sheath where it lies on her lap, running her fingertips across the textured pattern of the tooled leather. She slides the dagger back into it, but leaves it there in her lap for a while, so she doesn't have to let go off his hand to put it onto her own belt. "Who's better, when you spar together? You or Phi?"

Terry laughs, soft but warm, bright enough to chase away the specter of Seath and the inevitable fight to come. "Don't think I've forgotten that you speak with my wife every morning. I'm not fool enough to say it's me." When she looks at him, his eyes are creased with humor, his whole face bright and happy as he speaks of her. "I'm better with a dagger than she is, and if she tells you otherwise it's a bald-faced lie. But I'm better with my axe than with my daggers, and Phi..." He trails off with a sigh, smiling at the sky up above them. "She's a wonder to behold with her sword. She's stronger than I am, but my footwork's a little better. It makes for fun sparring together. We challenge each other."

"You'll have to let me watch, the next time you have a chance for it," she says, and oh, it feels daring to assume that she'll still be around then, to assume that they'll win, that there'll be time and inclination for sparring practice after all is said and done, that they'll want to give her a show when wouldn't any long-separated couple care only for one another, once they're able to be together again?

But Terry just laughs, soft and gentle like the sigh of the wind through the trees, and keeps his hand in hers, holding onto her. "It might be our finest match yet, if we've got you to show off for."

And that doesn't make any sense at all, but Quil just holds onto his hand, holds onto the warmth in his voice and the gladness on his face, and doesn't risk the moment by asking why either of them would care about showing off for her in particular.

*

_Terry's teaching me to use a dagger,_ she says to Phi the next morning. _I'm afraid he's wasting his time, but he's insistent._ She gnaws on her lip a moment, then adds, _You' right. He's very good at reassuring. Thank you._

The silence that answers her is long, makes her stomach twist with worry, makes her hold onto that thread of magic stretching out from her, proof of the connection between them, that her spell hasn't failed, that it hasn't ended yet. She waits, and makes herself breathe, and refuses to let herself fret.

Phi's voice, when it comes, sounds strained, sounds tired. _How is Terry?_ she asks. _I miss him. Tell him I miss him. Tell him--_ A pause, and then the strain is worse, is enough to make Quil suck air through her teeth and tighten a hand on her knee, fighting the instinct to reach out to her, even with all the miles between them. _Tell him I love him, will you?_

The spell ends, the connection breaks and her magic draws back into her, and leaves Quil sitting alone amongst the trees, blinking, her heart racing and her breathing coming too quick and too shallow. It takes everything in her not to throw her magic out again, to try to reforge that connection so that she can demand, _What's the matter, what's wrong, why are you acting like this? What's_ happened _?_

She'll only hurt herself if she tries. There's no point in it. She makes herself stand, makes herself pull the blanket around her shoulders and walk back to the cottage, stands outside the door forcing slow, deep breaths through her lungs until she can open it without her hands shaking or her tail twitching, giving her away.

Terry's sleeping still, one of the few mornings he has even after she's risen, and she wonders if it's because of all the work he did the day before, teaching her the rudiments of how to fight with a dagger. She's glad for it, glad for a moment to sit on the floor and lean her back against the bed's edge, and focus on her breathing and try to master it and her expression before he wakes.

It's not long before he stirs, and reaches a hand down to brush her shoulder. She jumps at the touch despite herself, and he hesitates, then pulls it away. He shifts more, the blankets rustling around him, sits up and asks her in a voice that's rough with sleep and far, far too concerned, "What's wrong?"

She shakes her head quickly, swallows twice to chase the thickness from her throat before she speaks. "Nothing. I spoke with Phi." She reaches up behind her to catch his hand, pulls it back to press it to her shoulder, selfishly craving the weight of it to steady her, the warmth of it to chase the chill from her gut. "She loves you, and misses you."

She can _feel_ Terry's hesitation, can feel the way his fingertips press a little harder into her shoulder, just for an instant. "That's all?" he asks, and his voice is light but it's careful, it's so careful, and she shuts her eyes and forces herself not to react to that.

"That's all she said."

He nods, and leans a little more weight onto her shoulder for a moment before he slides his hand down her arm and off. "Do you want to work some more with the dagger today?"

She thinks about it briefly. "Maybe a little. Maybe later. I want you to teach me more about how to break away from someone who's got a hold of me."

"All right." His voice warms. He's smiling, and it feels like sunrise. "We can definitely do that. Let me get some coffee in me, and then I'm all yours."

*

She's up even before the dawn the next morning, despite working with Terry until every muscle in her body was exhausted, and then dragging Allan off for spell practice until her magic was depleted as well. But she's too anxious to stay in bed, or to try to sleep a little longer, so she rises and moves through the cottage without waking anyone, practiced by now at moving silently, and she's sure enough of herself and her magic that she doesn't wait until she's out in the trees. She casts her magic out the moment she's on the front step, unable to wait any longer. _What's wrong? Are you okay? We're going to get you out of there, just hold on a little longer, please._

_I need you to do something,_ Phi says, and she still sounds like she had the day before, strained for some reason. _Give everyone my love, please. Give Terry a hug and tell him..._ She's quiet a moment, and Quil can't breathe past the tightness in her chest. _Just, tell him I love him again._

The spell ends. Phi's voice fades to silence in her mind and Quil buries her face in her hands. She stands there for a long, long moment, just breathing against her palms, her shoulders shaking with it, before she turns and goes back to the cottage. She should leave them to their sleep but she can't make herself go back outside and wait, to sit alone with the knowledge that something is terribly wrong.

She lays a hand on Terry's shoulder when she reaches the bedside, and he's awake immediately, turning towards her, blinking at her through the darkness. "What's the matter?" He sits, reaching up to curve his hand around her wrist. "Are you all right?"

She shakes her head and climbs up onto the bed beside him, sitting with her arms wrapped tight around her knees, her chin pressing into them. "Something's wrong," she says, faint, as though if she doesn't speak it too loudly it will somehow stop being true. "I don't know what, but something's _wrong._ "

"You spoke with Phi," he says, and it's not a question, and his voice is heavy with certainty, with dread.

She nods and presses her knuckles against her eyes. "She wants me to give everyone her love. She wants me to give you a hug, and to tell you again that she loves you." Her voice frays, and it isn't helped by how she can hear Terry draw a swift, sharp breath. "I'm not wrong, am I? That's not like her. I asked her questions, I _asked_ her if she was all right, and that's all she said. Nothing about getting information, or reconnaissance, or strategy, just-- just that. That she loves everyone." Her throat hurts, and she swallows hard against it. "That's the sort of thing you say when you're saying good-bye, isn't it? It's the sort of thing you say when something's _happened_ , and you think you might not have another chance. If Seath suspects her after all, if he _knows_ what she did, and what she's planning--"

Terry's hand tightens on her, tightens until it skirts the edge of being painful, and she breaks off to breathe raggedly. She covers his hand with hers and holds onto him.

"It could mean a lot of things," he says, and he's quiet but she can _hear_ the tightness in his voice. "She didn't tell you anything else?"

Quil shakes her head hard. " _No._ If she had I'd be less worried. There's so little we can say to one another in a day, before the spell ends, and she's always been careful to make good use of it. She's always been focused on what's most important, even when _I_ was scared, and now-- What does it mean, that she thinks this is the most important thing she can say?"

Terry lets out a long, shuddering breath. His hand eases around her wrist, and his thumb sweeps across the inside of it, as though in apology, though if she could manage the words she'd tell him that it wasn't needed. Or maybe he just means it to soothe, and if she tried to tell him she didn't need _that_ , it would be a lie. "It might just mean that she's missing us particularly today. We all know what must be done and why it's important, but we still have hearts, and they can still ache. She may just be feeling it especially keenly today."

"It might," Quil says, and even to her own ears, her voice sounds flat and disbelieving.

"We're already planning on making our move soon," Terry says. "We'll talk with the others when they wake up and see what we can do to make that happen a little sooner. Just in case it's not." He brings his other hand to her shoulder and grips her there, and it's steadying. His certainty is steadying.

"Okay." She draws a breath and nods. "Okay."

"None of us want to see her harmed. We'll all do everything in our power to keep her safe, and bring her home."

"I know."

He looks at her, his gaze tracking over her face with a little frown pinched between his brows, like he's not sure of the expression he sees there, or not glad about it. But after a moment he just sighs a little, and squeezes her shoulder once more, and leans in and presses a kiss to her brow. She shuts her eyes and sways a little bit into him, despite herself. "I'll get some coffee started," he says quietly, and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. "And if that doesn't wake people up, then we'll wake them up ourselves, and decide together how best we can make sure that Phi stays safe."

She nods again, says, "Okay," again, but even that feels like a lie on her lips. Nothing is okay about any of this. Phi is far away, and in danger, and acting like something's wrong but won't tell her what. Nothing feels okay at all.

The smell of brewing coffee filling the cottage does, as predicted, rouse the others, and once they're up and have their own cups cradled in their hands, Quil tells them all what she told Terry, about what Phi said, about how strange and wrong she's seemed, about what she fears. And she sees it on all their faces, sees that she wasn't wrong in thinking that this seems uncharacteristic for Phi. She isn't wrong to be scared. They all are, though they cover it all in their own ways: Gari's mouth goes tight and her fingers drum against the side of her cup and she starts asking low, pointed questions about weaponry and provisions and what preparations they'll need to make before they'll be ready to leave, while Lanra swears, low and violent, and fists a hand in his own hair so tight that his knuckles turn pale and it looks like it must hurt, but not so much as the fear and frustration transforming his expression does. Allan breathes slow and deliberately, and every movement he makes looks careful and precise as he unbuckles his spellbook and starts paging through it, slipping ribbons between the pages to mark spells he wants to come back to and study.

"What about Iain and Kal?" Quil asks softly, looking between each of them.

"We'll need them with us, of course." Gari looks grim, looks so grim. "We may need to do without the potions. It won't do us any good to wait for them to finish brewing, only to get to Phi too late."

Quil looks at all of them, their faces gone solemn and unhappy, making plans in low, tense voices and sounding like they mean to leave that afternoon if they're called to do so, and she's glad for it at the same time that she wants to cry. She wants to go to Phi, wants to _be there,_ wants to have been there two days ago, before whatever happened that made her start acting so strangely, and she can't begrudge any of them for wanting the same.

But they're still talking about marching off to face Seath, to face a _dragon,_ and she worried enough about that when they were approaching it some measure of care and consideration. Now... now they're talking about foregoing healing potions, they're discussing how few provisions they can get away with, they're debating how fast they can move and how little sleep they'll all need in order to get to the palace as quickly as possible, and the she sees the specter of Seath looming even larger over them all, his shadow cast even darker and heavier, and she doesn't know how to reconcile her fear for Phi with her fear for the rest of them.

"Allan," she says quietly, looking down at her hands where she's twisted them in her lap. "Don't let me keep you from your studying. But when you have the chance, I think I could use some more target practice."

And Allan goes silent a moment, and says, "Of course," just as quietly, even as Lanra starts digging through his pack, muttering about having misplaced his whetstone.

*

She's exhausted by the end of the day--physically, emotionally, magically, and by rights she ought to fall asleep as soon as she curls up on the floor with the quilt pulled over her. But every sound that the others make as they settle themselves down around her abruptly feels deafening, every rustle of blankets and quiet murmur of conversation sets her on edge, has her shoulders tightening, leaves her holding carefully still and squeezing her eyes shut and trying so, so hard to ignore it all, to succumb to the exhaustion that makes her whole body feel as heavy as lead, to _sleep._

It doesn't help. Eventually, everyone gets settled and falls quiet. The cottage is dark and still around her, and still she can't make her breathing slow, can't calm the caged-bird flutter of her heart, can't keep her thoughts from spinning in a circle, endless and incessant.

_Sleep,_ she tells herself, again and again. _How will this help anything? How will this help_ Phi? _You'll be no use at all if you're exhausted tomorrow._

And then, later, when enough time has passed that the faint, silver light cast by the moon through the window has shifted across the floor, _How do you expect to speak with Phi in the morning if you don't let yourself rest? How are you going to make sure that she's still all right?_

She resorts, eventually, to lying on her back, staring at the beams of the roof overhead and listening to the sounds of breathing around her, the distant hoot of owls from the woods outside, the shift and sigh of blankets as people move or turn over in their sleep.

There's one pattern of breathing that's faster than the rest, not sleeping as deeply. Or, she realizes when it hitches and sighs in time with the rustling of the blankets, not sleeping at all. She rolls onto her side, towards the direction she thinks it's coming from, and shuts her eyes with a soft exhaled breath when it comes again, a sigh and movement, and the creak of the bedframe, and it confirms what she'd feared: it's Terry who's sleeping restlessly, or who's not sleeping, and she remembers what he said to her, that she only thinks he doesn't toss and turn through the night because she's sleeping while he does so.

She reaches a hand up, up, onto the mattress and then stretches across it, seeking, until her fingers brush against something less yielding than the blankets, and Terry sucks in a sharp breath and goes abruptly, perfectly still.

An instant later, before she can retreat or apologize, there's a touch against her hand, fingers grazing warm and gentle across the back of it. She lets out her breath all at once, and when she turns her hand over, he slides his into it, threads his fingers between hers, and holds onto her tightly.

She shuts her eyes against the dark night, against the shadow-choked cottage around her. She lets her breath out, slow and careful, and doesn't relax her grip around Terry's hand at all.

He holds onto her just as tight, seems just as reluctant to let go of her. After a moment he shifts on the bed again, rolls over and scoots a little bit down and hangs his arm over the edge of the bed, so that she isn't reaching as far to meet him, so that they can hold onto each other and not have to break away.

It's nothing, it's a poor enough balm against the fear or the concern, against the overwhelming weight of everything they're facing and all the odds that are stacked against them. It's the warmth of a palm against hers, fingers caught between hers and holding her caught just the same, it's a bridge between two small, lonely islands caught in the storm-tossed seas of their own fear, and it feels like a miracle.

*

_What's_ wrong? _Everyone's worried,_ Quil says, the instant she feels the spell catch between them. _We're coming for you, but if you're okay, please say so, before everyone runs off half-prepared, without even any healing potions._

Phi's answer, this time, comes almost at once. _Don't,_ she says, sure and swift, and Quil has to press her hands to her mouth to stifle her cry, that Phi's still alive at least, that whatever's wrong hasn't caught up with her yet. _I'm not there. Seath's diviners scried on you. He knows you're alive. He's sent me to find you and bring you back to him._

The connection ends, and it leaves Quil sitting alone in the woods, nearly shaking with her mingled relief and fear. Seath _knows,_ and whatever measure of safety the woods and Phi's family have provided are almost meaningless now. But Phi's alive, and she's left the palace, and both of those facts are so heartening that Quil can almost ignore the terror that's curled up low and tight in her stomach, like a viper waiting to strike.

Her hands are shaking when she pushes herself up to her feet, her breath is stuttering, and she hasn't managed to get any better control over any of it by the time she's standing at the cottage door, one hand braced against it to push it open and step inside.

There isn't any point in waiting. It's not as though her relief is going to get any smaller, given a few moments, or her fear any less overwhelming. She pushes the door open and slips inside, picks her way across the blankets and sleeping people strewn across the floor and climbs right up onto Terry's bed.

He wakes at once, and she moves in against him even as he sits up, her arms going tight around him and her face pressed to his shoulder, breathing raggedly there. Her horn must be pressing against his neck like this, must be uncomfortable, but he doesn't protest and doesn't move to dislodge her, just makes a soft, sleepy noise of concern and wraps his arms around her in turn. One hand drops to her back and rubs in long, soothing strokes up and down her spine.

"She's okay," Quil says against the worn fabric of his shirt, and feels him jolt beneath her, hears the sharp hitch of his breath. "She's alive, and she's gotten out of the palace. She's coming to us."

" _What?_ " Terry breathes the word, soft with wonder. "You're sure?"

"As much as I can be." Quil lifts her head, so she can meet his gaze. "Would she lie?"

"No," Terry says, without hesitation.

Quil holds his gaze, nods once. "Then I'm sure." And she watches the relief and joy crash over him, transforming his expression. He shuts his eyes as the force of it floods across his face and looses one hand from around her to bring it up and press to his eyes, his shoulders shuddering a little with every breath.

"Thank you," he says, faint and fervent, and the hand on her back tightens on her, gripping a shoulder, solid and sure. "Quil, _thank you._ "

She swallows against the knot in her throat, swallows back the urge to protest, _I didn't do anything, I just talked to her._ Says, instead, "Iain said it was going to take a week for the potions. That'll be tomorrow. Will you take me there in the morning, so I can bring my honey to him?"

"Of course," Terry says immediately, without pause for hesitation or thought. "I'd be glad to."

She nods once and swallows again, though it does little to dislodge the painful ache in her throat, and sets herself back from him. "Then I'm going to go check on my bees." If Phi's coming, then Seath won't be far behind her, and this is all going to come to a head very quickly. There's much work to be done, and not enough time to spend any of it dwelling on fear or indulging in the need for comfort. None of that will do anything to make Phi safer, or their fight easier.

Terry's touch lingers on her as she slips out of his arms and off the bed, his fingertips trailing down her arm until they fall away. It leaves a shiver across her skin, but she sets that from her mind, too, and goes back outside to the hive and the gentle hum of the bees within, just stirring awake.

She eases apart the branches that have woven together to form the top of the hive, creating an opening that she can look through, and see inside. The branches that Iain had helped her make and that she'd placed inside for the bees to use have been built with comb now, some of them heavily. A few of the bees stir when she looks in on them and fly out to buzz in front of her for a moment before they settle onto her horns.

She smiles fondly at them, murmurs, "Good morning, girls," to the hive, and reaches in to carefully move the comb. There's one that they're filling with brood, little capped cells with eggs and larvae inside, and it makes her heart swell to see it, visible proof that the hive is settled and happy in their new home, that they're thriving and growing.

There's comb with pollen stores, too, and she leaves that to them as well. But two of the frames have nectar stores, and she draws them both out to look over in the light.

Some of the bees cling to the comb and come out with it. They rouse a little at the light and climb along the frames, their wings humming, and when she brushes a hand across the comb to gently usher them away, they take to the air and fly about. Some of them settle on her shoulders or her horns or her hair, but some remain in the air, buzzing about her, and she's reminded of when she and Cordelia were young and their mother would boil syrup into candy for them as a rare treat. The kitchen always smelled wonderful, and the bubbling sugar was a thrilling temptation, and they always hovered about their mother as she stirred the pot, straining to see inside, clamoring to be allowed to break off the long strings that clung to the spoon whenever she lifted it from the sugar. Quil had thought, in later years, that they must have been an inconvenience to have underfoot, while their mother cooked and stirred and tried to keep their special treat from burning over the fire, and had marveled at how she'd never spoken to either of them impatiently, had always smiled and laughed and broken off bits from the spoon to share between them, and had never once made them think that they weren't welcome there.

She thinks about that now as the bees hum about her, like restless children waiting to be allowed at the sweet treat waiting for them, and she smiles, fondly, helplessly. "I'll leave you some," she promises them, and carefully works to break the comb free from the branches they've built it up from. "And anything else you collect this season will be yours. I only need this, to keep us safe."

The bees hum, and stir about her, and don't sting her or even start to grow agitated, and it's as much confirmation as she's going to get from them.

Some of the comb breaks beneath her fingers, inevitably, and within moments her hands are sticky with the honey that spills from them. Some of the bees on her shoulders venture down her arms and stand at the edge of the sticky smears across her skin and eat from it, their little antennae waving, and she holds still and lets them, until the comb threatens to drip the honey they've worked so hard to make onto the grass at their feet.

She leaves half of one frame in place, and returns it to the hive with the other, emptied frame, more than enough to sustain them until they've rebuilt their stores. And the rest of the comb she stacks carefully and brings inside, where Lanra helps her find a pot to place it in, and she begins to break it apart, first with her fingers and then, when the pieces get small enough, with the rounded end of one of the cooking spoons.

She places the pot near the fire, not on it where the sugar in the honey might burn, but just sitting on the hearth so the heat from the fire can warm it, so the honey will thin and flow better, and the wax will soften and break easier.

It's the work of a morning and then some to gather and harvest the honey, and she tries not to pay too much attention to the others and they move around her, focused on their own tasks. There's the sound of a whetstone on a blade, near to midday, and it makes her jump when it starts, and makes her stomach tighten with the understanding of what that's for, of what it means, what they all know it means. That the fight is coming to them, and it's coming soon, and if they're all very, very lucky and the gods take pity on them, they'll get out of it with injuries but nothing worse.

She stirs her honey and refuses to let herself think about what will become of them if they aren't lucky, and if the gods remain as distant and uncaring as they have always seemed. She can't think about it. She has to be strong, for the rest of them, as strong as they are, as strong as they need her to be.

Terry helps her find jars to pour the honey into, once it's warm enough to pour easily, and by early afternoon she has a small collection of little clay bottles, stoppered up and sealed and carrying a great deal of her hopes inside them. That this'll work, that it'll help, that it'll keep her friends safe and alive and fighting just a little bit longer. Just long enough.

Through it all, the bees stay with her, even though she props the door open so they can come and go as they please. They hover about her head and ride on her horns and sit on her knuckles, and Allan gives a soft, breathless laugh when he comes in from outside and sees them, and Lanra eyes them cautiously from across the room, but they stay by her and they don't disturb the others, and the others don't disturb them, and the hum of them is steady and gentle and such a comfort.

When evening comes, and then fades to night, Quil reaches for the quilt and the pillow that she's come to think of as hers, but Terry stops her with a light hand on her shoulder. When she turns back to him, his gaze seems to search hers for a moment. "We're going to have a demanding day ahead of us tomorrow," he says. "A long walk, and then whatever help Iain needs from you from your honey and the potions. You'll need your sleep if you're to be at your best." Before she can draw breath to say that she _knows,_ that she's trying, that she can't help her fear or how her worries spin through her mind with nothing to tether them, he continues, "You should take the bed tonight. I'll sleep on the floor."

She balks, frowning. "You're going to be walking just as far as I am."

His smile is lopsided and a little self-deprecating. "I'm hopeless with potions. I won't be any use to Iain. I can nap while you and Iain work, if I need to."

"I'm not kicking you out of your bed. You said yourself you haven't been sleeping well in general, lately."

"So I may as well sleep poorly on the floor, and let you get what sleep you can in comfort."

Quil pulls back from him. His hand hovers in the air a moment before he lets it drop to his side. "I am _not kicking you out of your bed._ I'm not. Gods, after everything you've done for me, that you all have--"

" _Please,_ " he says, like it's torn out of him, and then sucks in air like he didn't mean to. He shuts his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them again, they're pleading with her. "Let me do this for you, too." She opens her mouth to protest, but he doesn't let her, just speaks over her in a rush. "If you won't let me give you the bed, then at least let me share it with you."

She snaps her mouth shut and blinks at him, stunned silent.

"You're not so big. There's room enough for the both of us, if you don't mind sharing."

"There really isn't," she says, flat.

His eyes shutter again. He reaches for her, and lets out his breath like he's relieved when she doesn't pull back, when she lets him curl his fingers around her wrist and hold onto her, carefully, like she's something he's afraid to break. He says her name, and says it like it pains him.

"I'm not--" Her voice breaks. "I _can't--_ Don't you think--" She sucks air through her teeth, turns away from him, her hands curling at her side, and hates herself for not even being able to _talk._ "It's not right," she says softly, her back to him. "It's your bed."

"Quil," he says again, and it's so soft, and so gentle. She can't help but turn back to face him, wary. He looks at her like she's broken his heart. "I'm sorry. I pushed, and I shouldn't have. If you're not comfortable with it, of course I don't want you to. We can figure something else out to make sure you sleep better. Put some of the extra blankets on the floor for you, for cushioning, or--"

"That's not what I want," she says on a rush, then cuts herself off and stares at him, stricken.

Terry is so, so quiet, just watching her across the space between them, looking like there's a hundred things he wants to say to her but he won't let himself speak any more than she will. "What do you want, Quil?"

She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head, hating herself for saying anything, hating the fact that _everything hurts._

Movement, a sound like a sigh, like the softest exhaled breath. A touch like the softest flutter of her bees' wings against her skin, but it's hands cupping her cheeks, Terry's thumbs brushing across her cheekbones, across the corners of her eyes. "What do you want?" he asks again, just as tender, just as gentle.

She would shake her head but it would dislodge him, and she can't bring herself to do that. "It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

"I don't want you to sleep on the floor for me."

"What do you _want?"_

Her mouth tightens. Fine, she thinks, if he's going to be pedantic about it-- "I want you to sleep in your own bed."

He smiles a little, a little chagrined. "Do you want to sleep on the floor?"

"I'm fine with--"

"Quil."

She sighs, sharp. "No one _wants_ to sleep on a floor."

His fingers curl, the backs of his knuckles brushing so lightly across her cheeks. She _feels_ as delicate and breakable as he's treating her, like she'll fracture into pieces at a moment's notice. Like she'll fall apart if he keeps holding her like this, so gently, and like she'll do the same if he stops. "I don't want you to sleep on the floor for me," he echoes.

She lets out her breath, and most of her resolve goes with it. She's had to be so strong for so long, and she doesn't have much of it left anymore. "I shouldn't," she whispers. "I'm fine on the floor. I'm _fine._ "

He leans in, his brow pressed to hers. He's so close, and she is going to fall apart, she is, no matter how he tries to hold her shattered pieces together. "I want you to be more than fine, Quil," he murmurs into the space left between them. "There's so little I can do to help you. I'd like to do this."

She laughs, a bubble of disbelief bursting out of her before she can hold it back. "You've done _so much._ " He doesn't relent, doesn't stop looking at her like she's hurting him, somehow, and it's so much harder to tell him no than it is to say it to herself. She slumps, her shoulders dropping, and brings her hands up to cover his on her cheeks. "If I kick you in the middle of the night, you have to kick me out of bed."

It knocks all the air out of him, a rush of it like she's hit him with a blow just by saying so. "I'll promise," he says, "if you'll do the same."

She makes a face. "My hooves will hurt you more than your feet will me."

"You aren't going to hurt me," he says, just as firm and just as sure as when he was sitting across from her in the woods, when he stood every chance of being burned up by her magic.

"Terry," she says, and her voice breaks on his name.

"Quil," he answers, a gentle murmur. "Do you think I haven't seen how much you've tortured yourself over what happened in the palace? Do you think I'd let you put yourself in a position where you might find more ammunition to tear yourself up with?" One hand stays on her cheek, brushing gently across it. He slips the other around the back of her neck and presses there, firm, steadying. "You won't hurt me. If you don't trust yourself on that front, then trust me. I won't let you hurt me."

She huffs out a breath, and she doesn't trust him, not in this, not when he's already proved so willing to put himself in danger for her. But it's late and only getting later, and he's not wrong about what the morning will bring. She could stand here and argue with him, and she knows he'll dig his heels in just as stubbornly as she would. But honestly, a soft bed and warm blankets and someone lying close enough beside her to keep her from feeling alone sounds infinitely more preferable.

She pulls back from Terry, and for an instant he looks crestfallen and resigned to it, which is so much worse. But she backs up until the edge of the bed hits her knees and then she sits on the bed, scoots across it until the wall is at her back and Terry's face is lightening, is washing with a relief that looks overwhelming.

She grabs her quilt from where it stays folded at the foot of the bed during the day, so he won't have to try to navigate sharing one between the two of them, and shakes it out to spread over herself. She grasps her pillow, too, and shoves it into the corner made between the bed and the wall, and wedges herself in there as well, as close to the bed's edge as she can manage.

Terry freezes, halfway to climbing in the bed beside her, and his expression catches somewhere between chagrined and rueful. "It's not _that_ small a bed."

"I don't want to be an imposition," she says. And, "It _is_ small, though."

He smiles, though it's no less rueful an expression than the one that came before it, and sits on the edge of the bed rather than climbing into it. "You couldn't be." He reaches for her, reaches across the span of the bed between them, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She blinks at him, and represses a shiver. "It'll be more of an imposition if I'm up half the night worrying about whether or not you're comfortable, than if you just take your fair share of the bed." His mouth quirks. His smile edges a shade closer to genuine. "I'm used to only having half the bed to myself, besides. I'll probably sleep better this way than I do by myself."

"I'm not uncomfortable," she insists, and Terry sighs a little, and swings his legs up onto the bed, and shakes out his blankets until they cover his lap. She eyes him, quilt clutched close around her shoulders, as he shuffles his way down the bed and stretches out.

There's a wide chasm of bed left between them, and she frowns at it, even as he leans over to the nightstand and blows out the last of the lamps, and the cottage falls to darkness. Her heart's thumping, and she thinks that if he meant this to make her sleep easier and longer, then he sorely miscalculated, because there seems no way she's going to get to sleep for hours now, with her heart racing the way that it is.

Her eyes adjust to the darkness slowly, a testament to how tired she truly is, but eventually the shadows thin and recede and she can make out Terry lying across from her, the blankets rumpled between them like a stormy sea. And Terry's eyes are shut, his expression slack like he really meant it, about sleeping better in a shared bed than an empty one. He's on his side, rolled to face toward her, and he has one hand curled around his own blankets, but the other is laid out across the bed, as though he's reaching toward her even in his sleep, his palm turned up and his fingers curled and loose.

And Quil _aches_ , her heart thumping and her chest hurting with it. Tomorrow is going to carry so much of their hope and their fear with it -- about the potions, and whether they'll be ready in time, and whether her honey will help or all her effort will have been wasted. About Phi and whether she's all right, and whether she's going to remain that way. Seath is capricious, after all, Quil knows that better than most, and perhaps his anger at being betrayed will overpower his desire to find Quil. Perhaps she'll Send to Phi in the morning and there will be no answer, nothing for her magic to catch on. There's a lot of distance between the cottage and the palace, and any number of things could happen to Phi on the journey. She could be hurt, and they might never know.

Tears prick at Quil's eyes, and she _hates_ it, hates her weakness, hates that she was given her place in this bed to try to help her sleep and here she is, squandering the gift because she still can't coax her mind into silence, because she can't stop worrying at things that may never be, and things that there's little she could do to prevent, besides. She's doing what she can, or she ought to be. She can help Phi best by sleeping, by resting, by bringing her honey to Iain in the morning and letting him do what he will with it, to help augment his potions. She can help by _sleeping_ , not lying here in the dark running through every possible way in which things might go wrong.

The bed feels too big now, where it had felt narrow as they'd both settled down into it. Now, she feels cold and alone despite the quilt wrapped around her, despite the warm, close rhythm of Terry's breathing. And his hand lays on the blankets between them like an offering, like it's meant to remind her of the night before and how much easier sleep had come when they'd had one another to hold onto, the strength and warmth of their hands clasped together to help keep their fears at bay.

She moves slowly, wary of disturbing him, creeping one hand out from beneath the edge of the quilt and crawling it across the bed, inching towards him until finally, after what feels like it must be hours, her fingertips brush the side of his hand with the barest of grazes, and his fingers twitch in response, curling and stretching again like even in sleep, he's looking for someone to hold onto just as much as she is.

It feels daring to slide her hand into his, to press their palms together and thread her fingers through his. It makes her heart race, faster than it already was, to close her hand around his and hold onto him.

He stirs a little, and her heart leaps into her throat and lodges there. His eyes blink open, though they remain heavy and half-lidded. He tightens his fingers around hers and smiles sleepily at her and oh, _oh_ , this was a mistake. He's half asleep still, and can't see through the darkness the way that she can, and how many countless nights must he have spent like this with Phi, holding onto her in the dark? He's half asleep, he can't know, he can't mean to smile at _her_ like that--

He moves his hand and pulls hers with it, further up the bed, and presses a soft, sleepy kiss to the backs of her fingers, and Quil squeezes her eyes shut and wants to _cry_. This was such a mistake, she should leave, she should tear her hand from his and clamber over him and out of the bed and maybe out of the cottage. She should lie on the floor like she always has, like she's been _fine_ with--

"Go to sleep, Quil," he murmurs, and her heart turns over in her chest and it _hurts_ , and she gives a gasping breath that sounds like a sob, even to her own ears, and she squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head desperately, and she still, still can't bring herself to let go of his hand. "We'll figure out how best to help her tomorrow. There's nothing to be done tonight that we won't be better and faster and smarter at in the morning."

"I'm trying," she whispers, her voice fractured and hoarse. And Terry holds onto her, holds onto her like he doesn't mean to let go, and eventually, finally, the darkness claims her, and she sinks under it and sleeps.

*

For once, she's not the first to wake. She feels as though, once she's succumbed to it, sleep drags her down and smothers her, and coming back to consciousness is like fighting her way to the surface of a deep and drowning ocean.

There's light when she wakes, more of it than she's used to, and quiet noises of people talking with one another in low, murmured tones, and there's still a hand in hers, clasped fast, her fingers wrapped tight so that, when she finishes waking, it's with a jolt of chagrin, and she flushes and blinks her eyes open, and finds Terry awake and still lying in bed where she's keeping him, his hand caught in hers.

His lips quirk up into a gentle smile when he sees her wake, and catches her gaze. He reaches his other hand toward her, but hesitates when it's nearly close enough to skim across her cheek, and draws it back instead. "Do you feel better?" he asks, and his voice is soft and rasps a little bit with sleep. "You slept later than you usually do. I haven't been sure if I should be glad for it, or concerned."

"You should have woken me up." She pulls her hand from his and pushes the tangle of her hair back off her face, tucked behind her ears. "We could have been well on our way to Iain's by now."

The fingers of the hand she'd been holding stretch wide, then curl closed. He runs his thumb over his knuckles before he sighs a little, quietly, and lets it rest at his side. "You clearly needed it."

Her mouth tightens and she shakes her head in protest, but doesn't argue. When she sits upright, Terry sits as well, and it makes enough room for her to slide to the edge of the bed and then rise, and start grabbing up her few belongings and readying to leave, securing Terry's dagger to her belt, wrapping the honey jars in scraps of fabric from the box beneath the bed and carefully packing them into a bag to carry them in, slung over her shoulder.

Terry watches her a moment from the bed's edge before he stands as well, and gets himself ready, and Lanra gives them both a sidelong glance from the hearth and carries over a bowl of porridge that he presses into Quil's hands. "Eat," he says, "before you leave. It'll give you the strength you need for the walk ahead of you."

And Quil would protest that too, would insist that she's fine, that she's not so hungry, that she can eat when they get to Iain's but they shouldn't squander any more time than they already have. But there's a hard edge to Lanra's expression, like the edges of the blades that he spent so much time the day before whetting and honing to razor sharpness, and it carries a warning with it that makes her snap her mouth shut on her arguments, and grasp the spoon that he hands to her, and eat the hot oats as quickly as she can manage.

It only takes a few moments before they've emptied their bowls, and then everyone gives them hugs to wish the good-bye, and Quil slings the bag of honey jars over her shoulder and follows Terry as he leads her out and away from the cottage, into the woods the way she'd come with Iain and Kal, those long weeks before.

She's glad to have the need to follow Terry, to be shown the way, as an excuse to hang back a few strides' lengths behind him. He glances over his shoulder to her every once in a while, as though to make sure she's still there, and he stops and waits for her to catch up when she gets any further behind than that, and sometimes he stops to hold a branch up so she can pass under it without having to duck, or bends the long, reaching branches of a bush out of their path, where they won't catch and tangle on her dress. And sometimes there's concern or an unvoiced question in his eyes when he glances back to her, but for the most part he seems content to let her hang back, and doesn't seem inclined to break the silence that hangs between them, broken mostly by the crunch of their steps and the mismatched rhythm of their breathing.

By the time she catches a glimpse of Iain and Kal's home through the trees, Quil's warm from the exertion, her shoulder a little sore from the weight of the bag upon it, and her hip a little tender from where the pots have been rattling and bouncing against it. But it's been good just to have had the opportunity to move, to get her blood pumping from something other than panic, to feel the warmth and the burn of her muscles as she uses them, and to feel like she's accomplished something, even if it's just a walk through the woods. She feels a little steadied by the time they break through the last of the trees.

There's smoke coming from the chimney and a flickering lantern-glow from inside the house, and when Quil glances sidelong at Terry he looks quietly glad, too, now that they're here. Now that there's something real and tangible they can do to try to help.

The door opens before either of them even reach it to knock, and Kal ducks through the doorway and comes outside to greet them, smiling bright and broad. "We wondered when you might be coming by," he says to Quil. "Iain's been wondering about how your bees are doing for days."

"They're doing well, thank you," she says, and startles a little when she comes forward to greet him and finds herself wrapped in an embrace. She returns the hug, then draws back until he releases her, so she can move through the doorway and inside, and make room for Terry behind her, who hugs Kal gladly and says something to him, his voice pitched low enough that it's obvious it's meant for Kal's ears alone, and so Quil hurries over to where Iain is at the hearth, stirring a pot, so he won't think she's lingering and trying to eavesdrop.

Iain greets her just as warmly, with a smile that lights up his face and a firm hug. "How are your potions coming?" she asks him, and tries to keep the note of strain and worry out of her voice. It won't do any good to rush him, the potions will be done when they are, and it won't do any good to worry him by telling him about the last few days' fears about Phi.

"Nearly done," he says brightly, and sets her back so he can crouch by the pot again and resume stirring it. It bubbles slowly over the fire and fills the whole room with a flowery, herbal smell, very like how the potion he'd given her that first day at Terry's had tasted. "It needs a lot of attention at this point, or it could all go wrong. Every time I brew potions, I get to this stage and feel like my arm's going to fall off if I have to stir it for even one minute more." He grins at her, and winks, and drops his voice and leans in close like he's imparting some great secret. "Hasn't happened yet, though. But one of these days, I _swear..._ "

Quil laughs quietly, and settles herself near him, on the other side of the fire so she won't be in his way. "Can I help you? My arms are fresh, I daresay they might last a whole five minutes before we have to worry about them falling off."

Iain laughs, his eyes crinkling up with humor. "Thank you. I'm just complaining, though. It's not so bad as all that." He tips his head towards her, and the bag she's pulled on her lap. "Is that your honey? You did promise me a taste, you may recall."

"I haven't forgotten," she says, laughing, and pulls one of the jars out and unseals the lid. When she offers it out to him, he abandons his stirring long enough to fetch a clean spoon, and dips it in and scoops out a bit. It drips, golden and thick, from the spoon back into the jar, but he catches the dripping thread of it on a finger and sucks it clean before popping the spoon into his mouth.

Quil watches him, hands closed tightly around the clay jar, and watches him as he licks the spoon clean. He hums a little, happily, and when he pulls the spoon from his mouth he tells her, "It's very good! But you didn't need me to tell you that, did you?"

"Will it _work?_ "

Some of the brightness fades from his expression, and he sighs a little and gestures with the spoon. "That remains to be seen, really. We'll know when we try it. How much of that may I use?"

"All of it." She stoppers the open jar and slides it and the whole bag of the others over to him. "It's all for you. For this. I didn't harvest it so that we can drizzle it into our coffee or over our oats. I want to _help._ "

His eyebrows climb a little, and he gives a low whistle as he pulls open the mouth of the bag and glances inside, his mouth moving silently as he counts the jars she packed within. "Well." He sits back and smiles as he reaches to resume stirring the pot on the fire. "We won't have to be stingy with it, at least there's that."

"Iain," she says, and curls both hands around the end of her tail, to keep all three of them still. "What if this doesn't work?" _Phi's coming,_ she thinks, desperately. _She's coming and she's bringing Seath behind her and we aren't likely to have a week to brew a new batch, if my honey ruins this._

He glances sidelong at her, and there's a little furrow to his brows like he somehow heard what she didn't dare to say, after all. "Well..." He says the word slowly, stretches it out thoughtfully. "I couldn't say, really. I've never tried it. But I expect that if it doesn't work, then everyone will grouse at me about how I gave them overly-sweet potions to drink for no good reason at all." His frown eases, and his expression lightens. He offers her a smile, gingerly, as though he's uncertain whether she'll accept it. "There's a lot of work and a lot of magic that goes into these potions. I think it's going to take more than a bit of honey to undo it all, if that's what you're worried about."

She presses her lips together, her mouth in a flat, tense line, and nods, says, "Okay," and "I hope you're right."

She might trust his assurances better, she thinks, if she weren't already so terribly familiar with how little it really took to make magic go entirely, completely wrong.

"Let's find out then, shall we?" he says, bright again, as though he can make up for her worries with his own cheer, and she's so terribly grateful for it. She nods agreement, and leans in closer to watch as he opens the first bottle and upends it over the pot, letting the honey drip in long, thick ribbons into the bubbling potion.

The smell of it changes, changes abruptly and distinctly, and Iain makes a sharp, intrigued noise and puts the first bottle down near the fire. Quil quickly grabs up the next and opens it, and presses it into his hand before he has to try to reach down blindly to find it.

It takes time to empty all the jars of their thick, viscous honey, and then Iain takes the ones that have been warming by the fire and upends them again, to get the very last bits out of every one.

The color in the pot has changed a little, edging from green towards golden, and maybe that's from the natural color of the honey or maybe, Quil thinks, with her heart lodged in her throat, maybe it's the magic. Maybe it's because it's _working._

Even then, though, there's more work to be done to finish them up, there's dried, crushed herbs that Iain directs her to measure out in tiny, precise increments, while he continues stirring, constantly, and sprinkles them into the pot one pinch at a time. There's a great deal of waiting to be done, too, of stirring and stirring and Iain waiting for some imperceptible sign before he nods as though satisfied and reaches a hand out toward Quil for her to give him the next ingredient required.

She tries to help him as best she can, and hopes that when there's little to be done but to stir and to wait, and he still won't deign to let her take any of that burden off of him, that she at least provides him some company. And he explains what he can to her of what he's doing and why, and even with the knowledge that being an herbalist's daughter has given her, much of it still makes as much sense to her as the notations in Allan's spellbook do.

He must catch her looking lost, because he glances at her in the middle of an explanation and breaks off, laughing quietly. "This really isn't the one to jump into, when you're just starting out," he says, kindly. "I'll start you with a common potion sometime, if you'd like to learn."

She nods and leans her chin on her knees, enjoying the warmth of the fire and the warm smell of honey and herbs on the air. "I'd like that," she tells him. "Later. When you've the time to spare for me."

His expression twists a little, and he starts to say something but then stops himself, and turns his attention back to the pot.

It takes much of the day, between one thing and another, but finally, on towards evening, Iain sits back on his haunches and pulls a hand through his hair, gone a little damp at the temples with sweat from the heat the fire has filled the small room with, and says, "All right, that's as much as we can really do with it but hope we've done enough. Will you help me get it off the fire? We shouldn't bottle it until it's cooled."

The pot is big, and looks heavy even in its own right, much less filled with the potions. Quil says, "I'm not strong," apologetically, but gets to her feet and does what she can anyway, and between the two of them they're able to get the pot off its hook and lowered carefully down to rest on the hearth stones without spilling so much as a drop.

And even then there's more work to be done, washing out the bottles for the potions and melting wax over the fire, to seal them with once they've been filled and stoppered, and still, constantly, Iain stirs the contents of the pot. To keep anything from settling as it cools, he says, and affecting the final brew.

Finally, when the bottles and their corks are all cleaned and readied for Iain and the bowl with its wax is set close enough to the fire to keep it melted until they need it, Iain gives her a gentle smile and says, "There's little enough left to be done until this is cool enough to decant. That won't be until evening at the earliest, most likely, and there's little point in you sitting here with me and twiddling your thumbs. I'll call you for the bottling, if you'd like, but if there's anything else you'd like to do, even just to walk around the outside of the house a bit to stretch your legs after all this sitting and crouching--"

She nods, and does rise and stretch out her legs and her back, says, "It seems inconsiderate to leave you here stuck stirring that, while I get to walk about and breathe some fresh air. But, if you don't mind-- I do still need to speak with Phi today. I usually do in the morning but I--" She falters and feels her face heat, and can only be glad that her red skin might keep Iain from noticing the color rising across her cheeks. "I slept late, and didn't want to delay getting here, and getting the honey to you."

If Iain notices her blush, he gives no indication of it, just smiles a little bit brighter and waves one hand at her, shooing her towards the door. "Please, don't let me keep you from it. Give her my best, if you're able, will you?"

And Quil's stomach twists because she hasn't told him, hasn't told him about how she's spent days fretting over Phi or that she's coming, that she's nothing like safe and unsuspected in the palace like she had been when he and Kal left. She only manages to choke out, "I will. If I can," and then turns and flees before she can find out if he noticed the way her voice caught, or how it sounded half-strangled and too upset, even to herself.

Terry and Kal are outside, sitting together not too far from the cottage, Terry oiling the edge of an axe she's seen him carry but never use, and Kal wrapping a strip of leather around a spear, making a grip on its shaft.

"I'm going to go talk to Phi," she tells them quietly, and Terry at once sets aside his axe, leaving it propped against the wall of the house, and gets to his feet.

"I'll come with you," he says, with a glance at Kal that could mean anything. And she might protest that she hasn't needed to be chaperoned while casting this spell in a while, and he should stay and finish his work. But she knows she's worried him the past few days, worse and worse every time she's spoken with Phi, and the small reassurance of yesterday morning has done little to allay that in either of them. She can't begrudge him wanting to be there, wanting to know as soon as possible how Phi is and what she's said. So she just nods and slows her steps until he's caught up beside her.

There isn't her usual flat stone here, a convenient place to sit on, but that doesn't matter. She walks out into the woods with Terry close at her side, walks far enough that, just in case she's wrong about needing a chaperone for this spell, even the most far-reaching of her magic's misbehaviors won't reach the house or Kal sitting outside it. And then she sits, cross-legged in the dirt and uncaring with her back against a tree, and casts her magic out and sinks into the spell almost at once.

_I'm glad you're coming,_ she says, and even in her mind her voice breaks as she says it, and if she didn't already have her eyes shut to cast the spell, she'd have had to close them against the sting of tears that burn behind them. _We're doing what we can to be ready. Sharpening weapons, brewing potions... How long do you think before you'll reach us?_

Phi's response comes almost immediately, and it's as swift and sharp as a blade. _I'm_ not. _Are you mad? He'll be watching me. I am leading him as far away from you as I can manage, before he realizes._

The spell ends and Quil breaks free of it with a strangled cry, with her heart pounding and her breath sobbing out of her just as quickly as she manages to gasp it in. And Terry, Terry is there all at once, just in front of her, his hands on her shoulders and his face twisted with desperate alarm. "Quil? What's the matter? What is it? _Quil._ " His hands tighten on her shoulders. "Is it your magic? Should I--"

She wrenches away from him, twisting sideways and half-crawling back because the tree is behind her, unyielding, and she gasps, "Please-- Please back up, please, I need you to--"

It doesn't make Terry look any _less_ alarmed, but his hands open immediately, releasing her, and he takes a half a step back so that there's a little space between them. But he doesn't _go_ , he stays there, half-kneeling in the dirt in front of her, looking for all the world like he wants to reach out to her again, like he would if she gave him the slightest indication it might be welcome.

It's not _enough_ , and all she can hear is Phi's voice running through her mind, saying, _I'm not. I'm not. I'm not._ Saying, _Before he realizes,_ and leaving the horrible implication unspoken. That she won't be able to lead him anywhere else, once he does realize that she's misleading him, because he'll be furious, and none of them will be there with her to shield her from his fury.

Because he'll kill her, and she knows that, she knows that better than maybe anyone except Quil. And Quil wants to reach across the miles between them, wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, wants to scream, _No, you can't, you_ can't _, don't do this for me, don't you know how many people here love you? Don't you realize how you'll break their hearts?_

But she can't. She _can't_. Her magic already feels thin and recalcitrant, and she'd try it anyway and damn the consequences, let her burn if that's what it takes to tell Phi not to throw her life away on Quil's account, but Terry's still there with her, still far, far too close, and when she bats at him, pushing him back and babbling, "No, _please_. Go back to the house, please, I'll be there in a minute but I need you to _not be here,_ " it doesn't make him go. It only makes him look more at sea, and more alarmed, and then it makes his features harden with resolve, and his hands twitch like he wants to reach for her again. He doesn't, but he doesn't _go_ , either.

"I'm not leaving you alone like this," he says, low and unyielding. "Talk to me, Quil, please. Tell me what's wrong. Let me help."

"You _can't,_ " she says, and covers her face with her hands and shudders. "You can't help, except to go."

He makes a sharp, unhappy noise and he doesn't move at all, and there's _no time,_ every mile that Phi leads Seath in the wrong direction just increases the likelihood that he'll realize he's being duped. She has to tell Phi to stop this, _now,_ while there's still a chance to save her.

"Quil--"

She's not going to risk his life to save Phi's. She can't make that trade. And he _still_ won't go, there's nothing she can say to make him move farther from her than he already is, a meager step and a half away, and that's _nothing_. She draws a deep, deep breath, loses it on another shuddering gasp, draws it again, and a third time, until she can drop her hands and meet his frightened gaze head on and tell him, as steady and as clear as she can manage, "If you won't, then I need you to take me back to Allan right now."

It only makes him look _more_ baffled. "It's nearly evening--"

She struggles upright onto her feet and swats his hands away when he reaches and tries to help her. " _Right now,_ Terry. Take me me back to him _now_ or _leave me be._ "

Terry shakes his head, but his jaw tightens and his mouth settles into a resolute line. He says, "All right," like he means it to be soothing, except that she can hear the tremor in his voice and she knows she's worrying him, she _knows_ she is and she's sorry for it but she doesn't know what else she can do. She can't pretend she's all right when she's anything but, and she can't sit and do nothing when Phi's in so much more danger than any of them realized. "All right, we'll go. I'll take you home. Come back to the house with me first?" He holds a hand outstretched between them, not touching her but offering, waiting, and there's so much fear and so much tentative hope on his face, and it breaks her heart to look at him and to know what Phi's doing, and what it might mean for him. What it might mean for them all.

She swallows down the panic that wants to claw and scream its way out of her like a rabid dog, and reaches to place her hand into his, and shuts her eyes briefly when his fingers close around hers and he's holding onto her so, so tight.

It doesn't take them more than a moment to walk back to the house but every second makes Quil's skin crawl, makes the tension banded about her chest cinch tighter and makes her throat hurt, her lungs, her heart with every frantic, pounding beat.

"Wait here," Terry says when they've reached the house, and slips his hand from hers. "I'll be right back." He pushes the door open, doesn't go inside but just leans through the doorway, and she can hear him say, low and urgent, "I'm taking Quil back home. I don't... I don't know what's happened, but something's wrong. You should probably come too."

She hears movement, sudden and brisk, and Iain asks uncertainly, "Should I leave the potion behind?"

" _No,_ " Quil says from where she's standing, loud enough to carry inside. She's shaking, just a little, all the way from the points of her ears to the tip of her tail. "We're going to need them."

There's a moment of perfect, unbroken silence, and Terry's hand tightens where he has it closed around the doorframe. And then Iain speaks again, and sounds like he's struggling to stay calm, "Give me an hour, then, to bottle these up, and we'll be right behind you."

Terry turns back to Quil and looks at her, worry knitting his brows. "Is that all right?"

She wraps her arms around her middle and gives a quick, jerky nod. "We're going to need the potions," she says again, "but not _that_ soon." She takes a shuddering breath, though it does nothing to steady her. "But you and I are going now."

He nods, leans back inside long enough to exchange a few more words and a good-bye, and then he's back at Quil's side, watching her once more with that pinched look, like he desperately wants to ask her again what's wrong and why she's insisting on such haste, but doesn't dare, or maybe doesn't want to know the answer. "Ready?" he asks quietly, and holds his hand up between them, an offer once again.

She places her hand into his, clasps it tightly, and starts off into the woods, her long strides carrying them quickly back the direction that they'd come.

*

It's a quicker walk back than it had been coming, mostly because panic and desperation drive Quil on and she can't make herself walk at anything less than a hurry. Terry keeps pace with her and doesn't protest or urge her to slow down, and if she had space for anything inside her but fear, she'd tell him how grateful she was for that. But she can't, can't bring herself to say anything for fear that all that will come out is screaming, and so she just tightens her hand on his, even though she's squeezing so hard by now that it _must_ hurt, and hopes he understands what it means.

It's dark by the time they catch sight of the cottage, the golden glow of the light inside shining out through the windows, and as soon as she does Quil shakes Terry's hand off of hers and breaks into the run that she's been holding herself back from ever since they left Iain and Kal's.

She bursts through the cottage door, Terry just behind her, and scans the room until she sees Allan, leaning in against Gari and exchanging low, murmured conversation. "I need you," she says, as they all startle at the interruption and twist to look towards her. "Right now."

He gapes at her a moment, his mouth opening and closing. "What--"

" _Now._ Please, Allan--" Her voice breaks and she squeezes her eyes shut and presses a hand to her mouth to hold it back because she can't, she _can't._ Not yet. She can fall apart later, but not now.

But he's already moving, getting to his feet, coming to her. "Of course," he says. "Whatever you need." And he looks past her, over her shoulder to Terry behind her, and he looks lost and bewildered, but she knows that Terry isn't going to have the answers that he wants.

She just grabs onto Allan's hand and pulls him out with them, drags them both out into the woods to her rock and pulls him down with her when she drops to sit cross-legged on it. "Don't--" She glances at Terry, then back to Allan. "Don't let me set anyone on fire," she tells him, and only waits long enough for his eyes to go wide with realization, and for him to nod, and then she sinks down into herself and grabs up every scrap of magic in her as she goes.

She draws it all into her, gathers it and gathers it even though it fights her, twisting like snakes in her grasp, balking at the demand it somehow already knows she's going to make of it. But she ignores that, shoves her way past any reservations and just grabs at it again, grabs at it tighter, gathers it up into her grasp and then _shoves_ it out from her, shoves it west, towards where Phi must be, somewhere out there, alone under Seath's watchful gaze, leading him straight to her own doom.

The magic flies out from her under her direction, but then tries to slink back. She sets her jaw and shoves at it, pushes it out again and again, farther each time, grasps it and wrenches at it and shoves it, imagines finding Phi somewhere in the vast distances between them and pushing her magic into her until it sinks deep and catches, imagines wrapping her up in it and tying a knot so that she can't slip away _again._

Something happens. Allan says, low, warning, "Quil," but she ignores it, because something's _happening_. There's a catch and a pull at her magic, a sensation like lightning skittering along it, and she takes half an instant to pray that she's right before she screams out along that connection, _NO, NO, DON'T DO THAT, YOU CAN'T. BRING HIM TO US, WE'RE READY FOR HIM, WE'LL BE READY, HE'LL_ KILL _YOU FOR THAT, PHI PLEASE--_

There's a horrible, wrenching, heart-stopping moment of silence where she thinks that it didn't work, or that she was too late. And then Phi's voice in her mind, like a cool touch, as steady and soothing as water trickling through a stream. _I will not. I am not going to jeopardize you, or my husband, or my siblings, or my friends. I won't lead him to you._

With that, the spell ends, and what's left of Quil's magic seems to vanish from her grasp. She feels the lack of it like an ache, feels hollow and cold, and her heart's still thumping too hard and too fast, but she's motionless.

It takes her a long, long moment before she's able to open her eyes and face Terry and Allan, both sitting there watching her closely, both looking like they're barely restraining their panic.

"I did it," she says through numb lips, and Allan looks astonished and elated and concerned in turns. "I spoke to her again."

Terry's hand tightens on hers until her knuckles ache, and she's glad for it, glad to feel _something_ beyond the coldness that's reaching through her with icy fingers, turning everything black and frozen and still. "What did she say? Quil, what did she _say_ that's upset you so badly?"

She takes a deep, deep breath and lets it out carefully. "I'm sorry. I know I worried you. I didn't mean to."

" _Worried_ me?" Terry gives a bark of disbelieving laughter. " _Quil._ Please just tell me--"

"I'll tell you in the morning," she says, and uses the hand that isn't clutching his to push herself to her feet. "Please, let's go back. We've had such a long day. I'm tired, and you must be." She squeezes his hand again, and wants to cry all over again when he squeezes back, despite the bewilderment and outrage building on his face like stormclouds. "Everything will be much clearer in the morning, I think."

Terry gives her a long, long look, and it's not entirely a happy one, and she's sorry for it, but she _can't._ She can't tell him what Phi's doing. She can't worry him like that. "I know what needs to be done now," she says. "And everything is going to be fine."

Neither Terry nor Allan look reassured, and they protest as she stands, as she walks back to the cottage and they trail behind her. They break off when she lets herself into the cottage, no doubt to keep their own worry from spreading to Gari and Lanra. But all through the rest of the evening, through Iain and Kal arriving and the commotion that that causes, she can feel their gazes on her, feel the weight of how much they want to ask her. But she sits with them all and feels like one of her clay pots left forgotten beside the hearth, cold and empty and so very, very fragile.

*

She sleeps, but not well and not long. She takes her blanket and her pillow and curls up on the floor, and Terry gives her another long, searching look when she does so, but doesn't protest, doesn't try to coax her back up into the bed with him, and she's glad of it. She lies curled beneath the blanket, curled around that cold, aching spot at the center of her, and drifts in and out and in again. And when she rises up out of sleep sometime in the early morning, and stays there instead of slowly sinking back down again, she blinks her eyes open and finds that the room isn't even beginning to brighten with the dawn yet.

She sits up, carefully, so carefully, and sits with the quilt in a puddle around her, spread across her lap. And she swallows down the hard, aching lump in her throat and spreads her hands across the quilt, strokes the lines of stitching and little patchwork shapes, and finds every snapped thread and torn piece, and she draws her magic up the way Allan taught her and pours it out into the quilt, lets it work its way into the warp and the weft, and slowly, silently, she knits each tear back together, one cantrip at a time, until everything is smooth and even beneath her hands and it all looks whole once more, if not quite as perfectly even as it had been, or as it would have been again if Allan had been the one to Mend it.

She stands, still moving slow enough to keep silent, and carefully folds the quilt up again and lays it out neatly across the foot of the bed.

She hesitates there for a moment, looking down at the quilt, at the shape of Terry lying beneath his on the bed, sleeping still. And her hand closes around nothing, around air, but she makes herself turn away and step carefully, silently, across the others as they sleep, and let herself outside.

The morning's cold still. It prickles at her skin without the blanket to insulate her, but she ignores it. She walks out into the woods, out to her stone, and settles herself down onto it and takes a still, quiet moment to think, to compose herself and ready everything that she wants and needs to say. And then she grasps her magic and casts it out, casts it to the west, casts the spell that she's cast a dozen times before and waits until she feels the connection catch and hold.

_Tell me how to find the binding stones,_ she says, _and I'll meet you there._

_Quil._ Seath's voice in her head makes her breath come sharp and unsteady, makes her shudder, feels like a black and oily touch slipping through her mind. _Of course, my dear. Follow the Daleah River south, then turn towards the Caywood Mountains and journey for another day._ A laugh, low and rumbling and so pleased, and Quil's stomach roils with nausea but she forces it down. _I'll see you soon,_ he says and the connection snaps.

She opens her eyes but stays there a moment, breathing hard. She repeats his directions to herself, repeats them again, and again, until she knows them well enough that she won't forget. And then she stands, and she's only trembling a little when she turns toward the east, towards where the sun will rise and lead her to the Daleah River.

She hasn't gone half a dozen steps when there's a sound, a branch snapping that wasn't broken beneath her hoof, and she freezes.

"You were going to tell me something, come the morning," Terry says from somewhere behind and to the side of her, very soft and very gentle, and she shuts her eyes and sways where she stands. She doesn't have the strength for this. Not like this. "I think perhaps it's time you did so."

She turns toward the sound of his voice. Even knowing he's there, even with her darkvision, she can't see him. "Please," she begs softly. "I have to."

There's a rustle, movement in the shadows, and then one of them shifts in such a way that all at once she can make it out as the shape of a man, of Terry, and he leans one shoulder back against a tree behind him and watches her with his arms folded across his chest and his gaze hooded and he looks so _sad_ , and it nearly does her in. "I need you to tell me what you wouldn't yesterday, Quil. I need to know the truth."

"I'm going to save Phi," she says, squaring her shoulders. "For all of you."

And Terry-- oh, Terry doesn't look relieved at that, doesn't look glad to know that he'll have his wife back with him soon, doesn't look confused as to how she means to do so. He looks _scared._ "Quil. What are you planning?"

"It's already done," she says, and he looks like she's torn his heart from his chest and crushed it between her hands, right there in front of him.

" _What have you done?_ "

"What I had to." Her voice goes thick and wet, and she can't do this. She can't. Not with Terry standing there looking like she's hurting him with every word that she speaks. "I ended this. I'm going to end it."

Terry's breath is too loud, is ragged. His hands open and close, grabbing onto air, onto his own arms. "I need you to tell me," he says, and his voice shakes as badly as hers. "Quil, I need you to tell me the truth, right now. What happened when you spoke to Phi yesterday? What frightened you so badly?"

Quil's throat works in silence for a moment. She doesn't want to tell him, not when it will only upset him. Not when she's _fixing it._ But her strength is already wavering, has been since the moment Terry made his presence known, and she wraps her arms around her stomach and tries not to shiver as she says, "Phi said the other day. She said Seath's diviners scried on me, that he knew I was alive. She said he sent her to find me, and I thought that meant she was coming to us, but she--"

Terry makes a sound, a soft, pained sound and squeezes his eyes shut a moment. "No," he says quietly. "She wouldn't. Of course she wouldn't. She'd lead him away."

Quil hisses air out between her teeth. "That's what she said, yesterday. I said I was glad she was coming, and she said she wasn't, that she was going to lead him as far away as she could before-- He'll _kill her,_ Terry. He'll kill her as soon as he realizes what she's doing."

"And what did you decide to do about that?"

"I cast Sending to Seath," she says, scarcely able to breathe the words because she _knows_ how he'll react to it. Or she thinks she does. She expects anger, or upset, but she doesn't expect the way Terry makes that same hurt, punched-out noise that he did at the news of the danger Phi's in, or how he reaches out to her and takes one swift step toward her before he holds himself back. "I told him to tell me how to get to the binding stones, and I'd come to him."

Terry's hand closes into a fist, tight enough that she can see the knuckles standing out, the tendons running across them. "And you think he won't kill you?"

"No," she says quietly. "Of course he will. But Phi--"

"Phi is my wife." He throws a hand out behind him, toward the cottage. "And their sister, and the last thing any of us wants is to lose her. But trading your life for hers is _not the way,_ Quil. Do you think it wouldn't leave us harrowed, knowing what you gave up, and why? Do you think we'd want that? Do you think _Phi_ would?"

She shakes her head, shakes it hard, and her vision blurs with the first tears that fight their way past her control and fill her eyes and oh, she could hate him. She could hate him so easily for making this so much harder for her. "It's done," she says, and her breath hiccups. "It's _done_. He'll be there, and if I'm not he won't shrug and turn around and go home. You have to let me do this."

Terry looks like he has so many things he wants to say to her, and likely not all of them kind or gentle. He struggles with himself, struggles visibly while Quil blinks tears from her eyes and swipes them impatiently from her cheeks. "I can't stop you," he says at last, and sounds as though he hates every word. "Much as I'd like to pick you up and cart you back to the cottage and keep you there where you're _safe,_ I can't do that. I won't." He takes a deep, deep breath and lets it out again. "So tell me where we're going, then. Where are these binding stones, exactly?"

She recoils from him so violently that she stumbles back, nearly falls when her hoof catches on a root. She stares at him, black horror rising in her like bile. "No," she gasps. "No, you can't come with me. I won't lead you there."

"And I won't let you go by yourself."

There's no point in fighting the tears anymore. They fall freely down her cheeks, an unending stream of them, and she gasps in shuddering breaths and shakes her head wildly. "What good will it do you to die along with me?"

His jaw tightens. His mouth goes flat and horribly, impossibly grim. "At least you won't die alone."

She gives a wet, humorless laugh and wipes her hands across her face. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"Is it?" His eyes are like flint, dark, sparking. "I've heard worse, just this morning."

"Terry." Her voice breaks on his name and it makes his face do something terrible, his mouth quivering, gone soft and vulnerable for just an instant before he presses it flat again. "I can't let her die for me. I don't know what else to do."

The set of his shoulders eases, dropping down into a stooped curve, and the hard line of his jaw softens and his arms uncross, and all the anger that's been in him fades and leaves him looking only heartbroken instead, and it's so, so much worse. But he takes a step towards her and hesitates, looking uncertain, then resolved when she doesn't flinch from him again. And then it's as though whatever tether has held him back has been loosed because he rushes to her, doesn't hesitate, just crosses the distance with his long strides and has her in his arms before she realizes what he means to do, holds her crushed to his chest with a hand closed tight on her back and the other in her hair, his brow pressed to the crown of her head as he holds her and shakes, like a tree in a storm.

"You come back," he says, his voice shaking just as hard as the rest of him. "You come _back,_ and tell everyone what's happened, and you let us _help_ you." His hands close on her shoulders, setting her back at arm's length. He slips one under her chin and lifts it when she can't look at him. His gaze holds hers and now it's ablaze. "You remember that you aren't alone anymore, and you don't have to be. That's what you can do. _Please,_ Quil." His voice breaks. His hand clenches on her shoulder, hard enough to make her wince, though he gives an apologetic grimace and loosens his grip again almost at once.

"I can't ask you all to do this for me," she says unsteadily. "It's my fault, it's my magic he wants, I'm just some girl who staggered out of the woods and into your lives one day--"

"You can ask. Just _ask._ We'd do it for you, we all would, in an instant. But ask us to do it for one another, if you won't ask for yourself. Ask us to do it for Phi." His hand leaves her shoulder, slides up to join his other, cupping her face between them, holding onto her so gently. "But don't ask me to watch you walk off to your death alone, because _that,_ I won't do. I can't."

"You'll all die," she whispers, broken, shaking in his grasp.

"Maybe," he agrees, and she wishes he were a little more willing to lie to her, to tell her something comforting, even if it isn't true. "But we've been facing that from the start. But Quil, with all of us together, _all_ of us, maybe we _won't._ " His thumbs brush across her cheeks, just beneath her eyes, sweeping away the tears before they have the chance to fall. "Can you say the same for yourself?"

She can't. Of course she can't. He knows it as well as she does, and she doesn't bother answering, just drops her head forward and lets him hold her, lets herself weep.

"Come back," he murmurs, long moments later when the storm of her tears has passed through her and left her shuddering and limp. He folds her into his embrace again and murmurs, soft and close, "Come back with me, Quil. Let us figure out how to help you. We'll figure out how to save Phi together. Just come back."

And she doesn't have the strength or the resolve left to do what she knows she ought to. She leans in against him, lets his strength hold her up where her own has failed, and nods against his chest, and hopes that it isn't cowardice to let herself be convinced.

"All right," she whispers, and her hands clench on his sides, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt and holding fast. "All right. I'll go back."

_I'm sorry, Phi,_ she thinks as Terry tucks her in against his side and walks back to the cottage with her. They can't be more than a few dozen yards away, but it feels like they've got miles to cross, and every step that she takes feels exhausting.

Terry doesn't rush her, doesn't show any sign of impatience, just keeps his arm around her and keeps her close, and walks at her side, bolstering her up so that she doesn't have to rely on her own flagging strength, because she can depend on his.

*

Terry sits her on the bed once they're back inside the cottage and shakes out the quilt -- not where she left it, she notes, and doesn't let herself think too hard about what that means, because the idea of Terry seeing it and realizing what it meant and coming out in the woods to find her is more than she can endure right now. Better to let herself think that he only woke and saw she was gone and assumed she was Sending to Phi, and came out to join her for it the way he usually did, and only happened across her leaving by chance and lucky timing.

He wraps the quilt about her shoulders and bundles her up in it, then hesitates an instant before pulling his hands away and leaving her there. She wonders if he thinks even now that she might bolt for the door while his back is turned, and can't figure out how to tell him that he needn't worry, that she had such small reserves of strength and determination to start with, and they're emptied now. She doesn't have the courage to leave again, even though she knows she should.

He moves through the cottage, crouching to shake awake those who are still sleeping, though Lanra and Iain both roused at the noise they made coming back in, and Allan was already awake and stirring up the fire when Terry shouldered the door open.

Quil wraps her fingers around the edges of the blanket and can't make herself look anyone in the eye.

Once everyone is awake, most blinking sleepily and rubbing the grit from their eyes, glancing between Quil and Terry and looking apprehensive, Terry comes back to the bed and sits beside Quil. One arm goes around her back, his hand spread warm across her and rubbing up and down her spine.

"They need to know," he murmurs, low, meant for her ears alone. "They deserve to be told."

Quil sighs, shaky and broken, and twists her fingers together on her lap until Terry reaches with his other hand and covers them. She looks up at him, and she knows he was angry, knows he was hurt and scared and it's her fault, but he looks nothing but gentle now.

She drops her gaze back to the folds of the blanket piled up on her lap, but even that brief glance was enough to bolster her courage some, at least long enough for her to forge ahead before it flags once more. Enough to say, "Seath's coming. There are magic stones in the woods to the east, and I told him to meet me there. I don't know how long it would take a dragon to fly that far, or how much time we have, but--" Her chest is getting tight again, her breath coming too fast and too shallow. "He was following Phi and she was leading him astray, and I couldn't let her risk her life for me, not like that. I _had_ to."

There's mostly silence that answers her confession, silence and Lanra swearing softly beneath his breath. Quil risks a glance up and finds most everyone watching her with solemn, stricken gazes.

Iain looks quietly horrified, and he's the first to speak, to breathe, "You were going to use yourself as _bait?"_

Quil fights back a bubble of hysterical laughter. It's too generous an assumption, more generous than she deserves. He already looks so upset by the thought, and he hasn't even guessed the truth of it. She can't bring herself to say, _No, not bait. Bait implies a trap. I was just going to be a distraction. I was going to be a sacrifice._ "I had to do something," she says instead, soft and helpless, hopeless.

"Of _course_ we're going to do something," Lanra says, full of thunder and outrage. "But we could've come up with a plan that was better than setting you out like a worm on a hook _._ We could've--"

"It doesn't matter," Gari says, quiet and sure, and everyone looks to her. "He's coming. He's expecting her to be there. We could've devised a better plan with time, but we don't have that now."

"You _do_ mean to use her as bait." Iain's voice climbs, indignant. "He's a _dragon_ , what if he swoops in and swallows her down in one gulp, before we have the chance to spring any traps?"

"I should be, though," Quil says, softly. "It makes the most sense." And Iain turns and gives her a look like she's somehow personally betrayed him by saying so, and makes Terry's hand tighten where it's still pressed over hers.

Gari glances at Quil and her expression softens with sympathy and sadness, though Quil thinks it's Iain who deserves that more than she does. "It does, I'm afraid," Gari says, with the air of someone trying to cushion a blow, even though it's Quil herself suggesting it. "He'll be expecting you, so there's no point trying to play coy about you being there. But he won't be expecting us. If we get there in time and hide ourselves well, we can take him by surprise. It might be the only advantage we're likely to get in this fight."

"We aren't going to be able to travel faster than a dragon flies," Kal points out. "Even if he's traveling from the palace."

"I can help with that," Allan says, and then pulls a face. "Maybe. I can _try._ There's a lot of risk involved."

"Everything about this is risky," Terry points out, squeezing Quil's hand. "What do you have in mind?"

"I have a scroll," Allan says. "It's a _very_ high-level spell. I've been holding onto it until I'm strong enough to be able to learn it, so I can put it in my spellbook. I could cast it instead, though. I could try." A muscle in his jaw works for a moment. "It's stronger than anything I've ever cast before. It might not work. But if it does, it could get all of us there immediately." He glances sidelong at Gari, and his brows pinch together. "Or it could take us all to entirely the wrong place. Even if I _were_ strong enough to learn the spell, it'd be risky trying to use it to get us to a place I've never seen before. But... it might work."

Gari taps a finger against her chin thoughtfully. "I know some spells that might be able to help you with that, that can give you a little boost in the right moment." Her face breaks into a grin, and she rocks her shoulder against Allan's, eyes bright. "Not that you're not smarter than the rest of us combined already. But I could help make you a little bit more, if it'd help."

"Anything would help," he tells her gratefully. "I'd be glad for it."

She nods once, like it's decided, and looks around at the others. "When should we go, then?"

"Right away, of course," Lanra says. "What's to be gained by waiting? We'll need as much time as we can manage to set up our ambush, and we can't know how much of it we'll have."

"My potions are ready." Iain tilts his head towards his bag in the corner. "We should split those up between us before we go, just in case we're teleporting into the middle of a fight. What about everyone else? Are we all ready?"

"We've been preparing for days," Terry says quietly. "We've all cleaned and sharpened our weapons, and made as much preparations as we can. If we're not ready now..." He lifts one shoulder in a shrug, and it might be meant as an easy gesture but Quil's sitting next to him, has his hand covering hers, and she can see and feel the tension in him, how he quivers like one of the strings on Gari's lute.

Everyone seems in agreement, and Quil watches them all from where she's curled in on herself on the bed and she wants to cry, listening to them talk like it's a given that they're going to do this, that they're going to risk their own lives because she asked them to. She tries not to think that if Terry hadn't interrupted her in the woods, they'd all be sleeping right now, they'd be _safe_ , not discussing the strength of Iain's healing potions like it's a given that they're going to be hurt and in need of them, not helping one another don armor and strap weapons to their sides or their backs.

Terry's hand on her shoulder draws her attention back from her own bleak thoughts. She looks up at him, and he looks just as somber as everyone. More so, maybe, as he presses the dagger he'd given her into her hands. "Wear this," he tells her, urgent, putting weight behind his words. "But remember what I told you."

_Try not to get in a knife fight with a dragon,_ he'd said, and she might laugh if she didn't already want to cry. "I know," she says softly, and slips out from beneath his hand so that she can stand and fix the dagger's sheath to her belt. "It's a last resort. I have other strengths I should lean on first."

He watches her for a long moment, like maybe that's not what he wanted her to say after all, but then he just nods once like he's satisfied, and stands as well. "Is there anything else you need, to be ready?"

She presses her mouth together and shakes her head. "What about you? Can I help you with anything? I-- I don't know how to help you put on your armor, or anything, but I could--"

He smiles, quiet and too sad, and pulls her in to press a kiss to her forehead. She shuts her eyes and doesn't let herself sway into it. "Thank you. I'm all right, though. It won't take me more than a few minutes."

She nods and slips outside, making room in the cottage for everyone else as they finish readying, and sits on the steps with her arms around her knees and stares out into the cool green of the trees around them and tries not to think at all.

It's only a few minutes at most before everyone's ready and coming out of the cottage to stand in the clearing before it, and Quil gets to her feet to join them. Terry grasps her hand and holds it tightly, and she holds on back as Allan pulls a scroll case out of his pack and opens it, and takes from within a piece of parchment that practically glows with all the magic inscribed upon it.

Before he unfurls it, he glances to Gari, and she steps in and puts her hands on either side of his face, hums under her breath and then quietly sings a few arcane words that make magic swirl up around her like a leaves dancing in a breeze. "Fox's cunning for you, Allan," she murmurs, smiling at him. "For the smartest man I've ever known." And the magic curls to encircle them both, and then settles over Allan and shines brightly there for a moment, like runes drawn in liquid light across his skin, before it sinks in and vanishes. "I have every faith in you," Gari finishes, and rises up onto her toes to press a kiss to his cheek. "Now, show off all those smarts I just gave you, and take us where we need to be, yes?"

Allan holds her gaze for an instant and then nods once, and unrolls the scroll, and begins to read from it.

Quil's skin prickles as Allan's voice seems to reverberate through the air. Magic spills off of him, surrounding them all, building thicker and brighter until they're all breathing it in, wrapped in it, magic linking them to one another like a chain. And still Allan speaks, and it grows, and Quil instinctively tightens her hand around Terry's and fights down the ridiculous urge to panic. Magic whipping around her like this has only ever meant trouble before, but Allan's strong and clever and she trusts him. It's a powerful spell he's casting, and needs powerful magic behind it, and it's going to work. It's going to. It has to.

Allan's voice rises as he recites the spell until the final syllables are almost shouted. They make Quil's ears ring, make her vision waver as the world around her seems to twist and bend and she can't breathe at all, no matter how desperately she struggles to fill her lungs, and the only surety she has that this hasn't all gone horribly wrong is the warm strength of Terry's hand in hers, holding on tight.

There's a twisting, wrenching sensation, as though someone has grabbed onto her stomach and dragged her sideways, and then the magic fades and her vision returns to her, and she gasps in deep, greedy lungfuls of air.

The cottage is gone. The forest is still around them, thick and dense, but none of the trees are where they had been an instant before. Terry's next to her still, his hand still in hers and she can catch glimpses of the others through the foliage, not far away, just scattered between the trees that are suddenly standing in the middle of where they'd all been grouped.

Everyone seems well enough, if left a little stunned and disoriented by the spell, and it only takes a moment before they've gathered together again and each has made sure that the others are all there and accounted for. Allan looks around them all and his features twist with chagrin.

"I did warn it was risky," he says, like he's apologizing. "I-- I'm not sure where we are, or if we're anywhere even near your stones..."

"That was _incredible,_ " Quil tells him, and reaches with the hand that isn't still clinging to Terry to grab at Allan's and squeeze it, so he'll know how well she meants it.

"I'll go take a look, see what I can see," Iain says, and before Quil can voice the question of how exactly he means to do that, he steps back from the group and lifts his hands. Magic glows from within him, and in an instant, faster than a blink, his body shifts and warps and shrinks, and all at once where Iain had been now there's a kestrel, its wings flapping as it hovers before them all.

Quil gapes, all the breath knocked from her in a single, wordless exclamation. Iain gives a sharp cry and then takes off, flying up and up and up, to pierce through the treetops overhead and disappear from view.

She stares after him, and then at everyone around her, none of them looking the least bit taken aback to have just witnessed their brother turn to a bird. She looks at Terry beside her, who's watching her with a slight, amused curve to his mouth, and demands, "Has he always been able to do that?"

"Not always," Terry says, and there's laughter lurking in his voice. "But as long as you've known him, yes. He has a connection with the land," he adds, like that's any sort of explanation at all. "And the beasts that reside within it."

"Oh, of course," she says faintly. "A connection. How silly of me not to realize that meant he could _turn into a bird._ " She tips her head back, staring up at the branches that Iain disappeared through. "Why doesn't he do that _all the time?_ If I could do that, I don't think I'd ever do anything else."

Terry laughs, quiet and warm. "I wasn't there when he discovered that trick, but I have it on good authority from Phi that when he first learned to do it, that's precisely what he did." He squeezes her hand gently. "You should ask her sometime to tell you some of those stories. I think you'd like them. She has some great ones about when he was young and impatient and pushing his limits, and kept finding himself abruptly turned back to human in mid-flight, or while scampering along the beams of the hold as a lizard. He got himself into all sorts of messes, to hear her tell of it."

"I'd like that," Quil says quietly, and if Terry notices how her voice has gone abruptly thick at the easy suggestion, like it's just a given that they're going to be fine and Phi is and they'll all have the luxury of trading stories about their childhood misadventures, he doesn't mention it and neither does she. "I'll ask her."

Terry glances sideways at her then nods, like he's heard everything she's thought without her having to voice it, and they stay as they are, holding onto one another as everyone else mills about and talks amongst each other and waits for Iain to return, to tell them where they might be.

It's not long before he comes, a half hour at most and then there's another piercing raptor-call through the woods and the trees rustle, and then he's diving down towards the group only to pull up abruptly just before he'd crash into the ground. He takes a perch on a nearby branch, only a little above head height for most of them.

"If you change there," Gari tells him mildly, "you're going to be stuck up that tree and we're all going to laugh at you."

Iain's feathers ruffle a little bit, making him look disgruntled, and then he flies down from the branch to stand on the forest floor, awkward for a moment before the magic flares again, and his shape twists, and as quickly as he'd vanished he's back again, standing before them like he'd never left.

"We're a little off, but not far, I think," he tells them. "There's an arrangement of stones about ten miles to the east that looks like it could be where we want to be."

"Are we between the Daleah River and the Caywood Mountains?" Quil asks.

He glances at her and nods. "We're in the foothills of the Caywoods now. I was flying the wrong direction to see the river, but we must be. If we'd come out on the other side of the mountains, there wouldn't be so many trees."

"Then it's the right stones," she says quietly, and squares her shoulders. "We should go."

Kal guides the group through the woods, with help navigating from Iain, who stops every so often to squint through the treetops at the sun, and then points in a direction that Kal then takes up, and leads them in.

It takes time to walk so many miles, especially when so many of them are laden down with weapons and armor, and it's late in the afternoon by the time the woods begin to thin out around them. It's Kal who gives up the cry first, calling softly to the rest of the group, "There -- I can see rock through the trees. We may have found your stones, Quil. Everyone, move cautiously, and keep quiet, just in case we haven't made it here first after all."

Quil scarcely dares to breathe as they all continue forward, their steps quiet and careful now, everything hushed. It's only a moment before she can see it too, a glimpse of grey stone through the green of the trees and the brown of their trunks. And even before they step out of the woods and into the broad clearing, Quil can feel the magic like a hum upon the air, like the charged moment before lightning strikes, making all the little hairs along her arms stand on end.

She hesitates. Most of the others continue forward, following Kal out, but Quil stops without even meaning to, without intending to. There's a lump in her throat, choking her, and the last thing in the world she wants is to get any closer to whatever it is that's the source of that magic, as vast and powerful as the river she'd crossed with Phi, that could have easily swept them all away.

Terry stops next to her instead of following the others. He touches her shoulder lightly. "Are you all right?"

She swallows and shakes her head wordlessly. What would it have been like if he hadn't stopped her in the woods outside his cottage, if she'd come here on her own, if she'd faced this alone instead of with her friends beside her? Would her nerve have failed her? Would she have balked now in the final moment, and fled, and doomed Phi after all?

"Don't--" Her voice croaks through her throat. "Don't let anyone too near those stones. Phi said they'll bind a person's magic to their body. I don't know what they would do to you or Lanra or someone else without magic, but it feels..." She flounders, at a loss for any words that are suitable to convey the vast power that she can feel rippling out through the woods. "Merciless."

Terry's throat works in silence a moment, and then he gives a single, sharp nod. "Right." His touch drops from her shoulder to her hand and squeezes. "Nothing's going to happen to you here, you know. None of us will let it."

He continues ahead before she can figure out a response, calling a warning to those already at the stones, and somehow it's easier to start moving again, with all the people she loves ahead of her.

The trees open ahead of her and she stops again at the very edge of them, staring out. The ground rises in a slope from the edge of the forest, coming to a gentle hill centered just beneath two concentric circles built out of massive stones, each thirty feet high or more and placed precisely, with runes carved across their surface. She can't read them, but she thinks that even if she were magic-blind she'd know they were powerful. The hairs on her arms stand on end just to look at them. She eyes them, and eyes the spaces between each stone too, large enough for a person to walk through if they dared to brave the magic coming from them, that feels like a storm rolling in, a pressure so heavy she can feel it in her chest.

The others have stopped outside of the widest circle, too. Allan stares at the stones in astonishment, and Gari with misgiving. Lanra has his arms folded over his chest and is giving them a look like they're a personal affront, but everyone's heeded Terry's warning, at least, or had enough sense not to need it.

She comes up to stand with the others. The stones tower overhead, and from this close they would be imposing even without the magic pouring off of them or the runes covering them. Quil wraps her arms around her middle and stares up and up and up at them. Seath was a fool, she thinks. If Phi had been working for him the way he thought, and had brought her here and tried to lead her inside those circles, she would have balked, even if she hadn't already suspected that he intended the worst for her. She'd have taken one look at those stones, and felt the power there, and she'd have fought back.

Phi is a soldier and a hunter, and Quil holds no illusions that she would have lasted long in a fight against her. But she'd have fought, and Phi would have had to kill her to get her to set foot inside those stones, and then Seath wouldn't have had what he wanted either way.

"This is what he wanted for you?" Lanra asks, still frowning at the stones as though he's wondering if they'll start moving if he doesn't keep an eye on them.

"There's powerful magic here," she says softly.

Lanra gives a sharp laugh. " _Yeah,_ I picked up on that." He turns his back on the stones, the first of them to do so, and looks at the rest of them. "All right, then. We've made it here first, looks like, thanks to Allan's spell. What's the plan?"

"If it can wait until morning," Iain says quietly, "there's a spell I can study, one of my new ones, that could help us hide. I can make the land look different than it is." He crouches a little, just enough to brush his hand over the tops of the grasses growing around them. "If he's familiar with this place, he'd know if I changed anything drastically. But even just making the ground look as though it's a foot higher than it is in strategic spots could give us a place to hide without being seen. And the illusion lasts for a day, so we wouldn't need to worry about being careful with the timing of it."

"That could be very helpful," Gari says. "Let's find a place where we can establish our camp, somewhere easily camouflaged by your spell, and we can plan a little more thoroughly in the morning. If he comes tonight, our ruse will be discovered either way, so we may as well take the time to plan this out well, instead of rushing into it."

"No," Quil says quietly, and they all turn to look at her. She has her arms wrapped about her stomach still, and she takes a deep breath and forces herself to relax them, to drop them to her sides and to square her shoulders. "We shouldn't hide the camp, or at least not all of it. He'll be expecting me to make one. We just need to be sure that it looks like a camp for one, instead of for seven."

"We can make a decoy camp," Kal suggests. "And one sized to fit the rest of us, that Iain will hide in the morning. So we're not all half-frozen as we try to crowd around a tiny fire."

That gets nods of agreement all around. "You should pick somewhere a little hidden to make the camp proper, all the same," Quil says. "So there's at least some chance, if he does come before Iain can study and cast the spell, that he'll see me by myself out in the open, just as he's expecting, and he won't notice the rest of you."

Most of the others nod, or murmur further agreement, or start to turn and glance around, scanning for a suitable place, but Terry gives Quil a sharp glance that seems to pierce right through her. "You are not spending the night alone."

"Yes," she says. "I am." And when he starts to protest, she lifts her voice over him, making him listen to her, "If he sees the rest of you before you want him to, then there's no point in any of this. The _only_ hope we have is to take him by surprise. So yes, I am going to be spending the night alone, just in case, and you all are going to _let_ me, do you understand?"

A few of the others blink at her, taken aback, but if anything Terry only looks more obstinate, his jaw tightening, his mouth setting in a hard line. "Quil," he says, and sounds like he's trying very hard for calm. "You can send the others off to a camp of their own if you wish, I won't argue the wisdom of that. But not me. I am very good at not being seen, I promise you, but if Seath comes in the night, before we're prepared for him, I won't have you on your own for it. I won't. If he drags you into those stones and kills you before any of the rest of us have a chance to get to you, then there really _won't_ have been any point to this."

Quil lets out a long, shuddering breath. She wants to wrap her arms around herself again, but she doesn't let herself indulge in the comfort. Her tail wants to flick back and forth behind her, sweeping through the grasses in agitation, but she doesn't allow that, either, and keeps it wrapped tightly about an ankle.

"Fine," she says, and it must come out sharper than she means it to because Terry flinches, though he doesn't relent. And she turns on a heel and walks off, towards a mostly-flat open space on the western side of the stones, more or less in the direction Seath ought to be coming from, if he's flying from the palace.

Terry follows after her a moment later and joins her in gathering up rocks to build a fire pit with. They work in silence together, and gradually some of the tension eases out of Quil's shoulders, and she finds she can breathe a little easier, even with the magic of the stones so close and so thick.

While Quil lays out a blanket to serve as her own bed, Terry gathers kindling and firewood from the fringes of the woods, comes back and builds it up neatly in the pit and stacks the rest of it nearby, enough to make it through the night without risking the fire dying. And Quil crouches beside the fire pit and reaches a hand out towards the wood as she reaches inside herself and draws up her magic.

It comes to her readily, too eager, and bursts from her faster than it should, not the mote of fire that she intended but a sphere of it, like the ones she'd used to practice her aiming with Allan. It bursts across the wood, hot enough to make her stagger back a step, to make her glad Terry had moved away a moment earlier to go and exchange a word with Iain, and it sets the wood aflame, raging-hot all at once, but also half-explodes it out of the careful structure that Terry had built. She hisses out a breath and glances sidelong at the stones, at the magic spreading out from them, filling the air like a restless hum, at once strange yet too-familiar.

The fire's already burning fiercely, as though it's been left to catch for the better part of an hour, instead of only just lit, and Quil doesn't think they need to worry about it extinguishing itself for lack of proper airflow the way they would with a newly-built fire. Still, she adds some kindling to the top, just in case, and then leaves the fireside to go find where the others are making camp, on the far side of the stones where Seath's unlikely to fly over them when he arrives. She catches Allan by the arm and pulls him away from the conversation he's having with Gari, some sort of intense discussion about spells, only a fraction of which Quil understands.

"Have you used magic since we got here?" she asks him quietly, pitching her voice low so it won't carry.

He lets out a short little breath of air, says, "You noticed it too, then," and she swallows hard.

"What _is_ it? It's not like when I normally lose control of my magic. But I only meant to light a fire, and I cast Fire Bolt instead, and it's only luck that Terry wasn't standing near enough to get hit when the wood exploded out of the pit."

Allan nods, his expression as grave as she's ever seen it. "That's what it did to the spell I cast, too. It didn't change it, but it made it... more. Amplified, somehow." He catches hold of her arm and grips it tight for an instant. "Be careful, Quil. I know you are, you always are, but even so. We don't know what exactly the magic of the stones might do, and I don't want any of us to find out the hard way."

She nods and takes his hand between hers and holds onto it. "I know. I don't want that, either."

"There's a cantrip," he says. "It's like Sending, but much less powerful. It'll only go short distances, but sometimes that's all you need. You figured Sending out on your own, I'm sure you can figure Message out just as easily. But if you need to communicate silently, or if you need anything during the night, or for any reason at all, none of us will be far away. You can Message me, or any of us, at any time. If you need something, you can ask it of us. If Seath's coming, you can warn us. If you just want a reminder that you aren't alone--"

"I think Terry's got that last one covered," she says softly, and smiles a little. "But thank you. Truly. I'll remember it."

He nods, and then his gaze goes past her, over her shoulder, and his his smile brightens and tips a little crooked, at the same time that Terry's voice says from behind her, "I've got pack rations for us, if you're hungry, Quil. They won't be as tasty as the cooking we've been enjoying back home, but they'll do in a pinch, particularly if we warm them over the fire first."

She steels herself a moment before she turns to face him. "I'm not, really. Hungry, I mean. My stomach's all in knots."

His expression shades with sympathy. "You should try to eat all the same, if you can manage it," he says gently. "You're going to need your strength as much as any of us. More, maybe," he adds with a little grimace.

He's not wrong and she knows it, even if knowing it doesn't help the nerves that are twisting through her gut. Still, she nods, and looks at Allan again to say, "Thank you. I won't forget," and walks back to their little fire with Terry, which is still burning as fiercely as when she left it.

They don't talk, much, as they settle beside the fire and set to eating, aside from what's necessary. And Quil still thinks it would be better if he weren't there with her, it would be _safer,_ but she can't deny that she's glad to have the company, glad not to be sitting alone with only her thoughts, whipping through her mind just as violently as the magic of the stones is through the air around them.

"I'm sorry," she says quietly, when she's managed to eat at least a little and is mostly just tearing the pieces of dried venison into bits between her fingers.

Terry looks at her sharply, like she's startled him by breaking the silence. "You don't have anything to be sorry for."

"I was short with you," she says. "Before. But I'm not angry, I'm just--"

The backs of his fingers brush against her knee and the words choke off in her throat. "Do you think I don't know what it's like to be afraid for the safety of people I care about?" he asks her quietly. "You have _nothing to be sorry for."_ His touch grows heavier, his knuckles pressing against her for a moment, and when he speaks again his voice is lighter, is deliberately so. "But if you keep talking like you're trying to say good-bye when I'm sitting here right next to you, then I might revisit my opinion on the matter."

She takes a deep breath and lets it out. He's trying to make her smile, and she wishes she could manage it for him. "I'm not saying good-bye." She stares down at her knees, at Terry's fingers pressed against the side of one of them. "I just don't want you to think I'm angry with you."

She can feel his gaze on her, the warmth of it against the side of her face, like sunshine. She doesn't look at him, and he keeps looking at her for a long moment before he speaks again. "Well," he says. "Should the day come that you _are_ angry with me, I wouldn't think you didn't have reason for it."

_That_ makes her glance up at him, startled. "Why in the world would I have reason to be angry with you? You've been nothing but wonderful since the day I met you. You've been kinder than I deserve, and generous with your time and your home, and I can't imagine what I'd have done or where I'd have gone if Phi hadn't sent me to you, but it would have been worse. It would've had to have been."

Terry's expression goes a little wry, a little chagrined, and she thinks that he's thinking of their first interaction again, that night in the palace courtyard, though he's already expressed unneeded regret for it. She can guess well enough that he's thinking of how he'd grabbed her and pushed her against the wall and covered her mouth with his hand, and thinking he shouldn't have, though she'd been the one foolish enough to try to follow after him, though she'd have shouted the palace down around his ears and to hell with her hiding place.

He doesn't protest her calling that wonderful, though, just says quietly, "I'm glad she did send you to us. More glad than I know how to express."

And it seems a perfectly ridiculous thing to say when they're sitting in the shadow of magical stones and waiting for a dragon to come, waiting for a fight that might likely kill them all. But he doesn't look like he's lying, he looks like he's flayed his own chest open and laid his heart bare to her just by saying the words, and so she swallows down any protest she might make to that, and reaches down and covers his hand with hers where he still has it pressed to her.

"I'm glad, too," she admits, and they sit together like that as the sky grows dark above them, the silence broken by the crackle of the fire and the rhythm of their breathing and occasionally, from a distance, the sounds of the others on the far side of the stones.

It's been a long day, and she's tired, but she doesn't want to sleep. It's Terry who moves from the fire first, pushing himself up to his feet with a groan and what looks like a rueful grimace, and he lays a hand on her shoulder. "I'll be near," he says, his voice low. "You shouldn't see me, if I'm doing my job right, but I'll be close. I promise."

She swallows and nods and reaches up to cover his hand with hers for a moment. When it slips out from underneath hers, she doesn't watch him go, just stares into the dancing flames of the fire and tells herself she has no reason to feel cold.

Eventually the fire burns low, and she puts a few extra logs on it, enough to buy her at least a few hours before she'll need to rouse and feed it again, and she wraps herself up in the blanket and curls up on the grass, close enough to the fire that she can feel its heat on her face. She shuts her eyes and watches the golden, flickering light of it through her eyelids until eventually sleep claims her.

*

She wakes with the dawn, like she's used to, and for a moment she just lays there, wrapped in her blankets and trying not to shiver. The fire's burned down enough that it can't keep the morning's chill at bay and the prospect of venturing out from the blanket's protection to add wood to it and stoke it back up again sounds unpleasant enough to keep her where she is, enduring it.

A branch snaps nearby, and it jolts her fully awake all at once. Her eyes snap open and her heart kicks against her chest, but before panic can completely grip her there's a light touch on her arm and Terry's voice, low and rueful, murmuring, "Sorry. I thought you might be up by now. I was trying _not_ to startle you."

She swallows back the fear and sits up, blankets still wrapped close around her. "I only just woke up. It was cold, and I didn't want to move."

He makes a wordless sound that might mean anything, and glances at her sidelong before he moves over to the fire and adds logs atop its glowing embers, and a handful of kindling as well, to ignite and help the rest of the wood catch. In moments, the fire's burning bright again, and its warmth seeps into her.

"Thank you," she says softly, and leans in against his side when he sits next to her. He goes tense at first, just a little, but relaxes before she can pull away and apologize. His arm curves around her waist and holds her there, like it's where he wants her to be. "Will--" Her voice catches, and she has to clear her throat. "Will you do my hair up again, like you did the other day? I don't know how to do those braids, but they felt..." She flounders for a moment, finishes with, "Practical," and means, _good for fighting_ , but she can't bring herself to say it.

"Of course," Terry says, and he sounds a little startled but he doesn't hesitate. His arm slips from her waist and pushes gently at her shoulder, turning her about so her back is to him.

She didn't bring a brush, didn't have one to bring, and if Terry thought to grab one during their hurried packing, he makes no move to go get it. He just sits behind her and carefully works the tangles out of her hair with his fingers, and she shuts her eyes as he works, lets her heart be soothed by the steady, gentle tug of his fingers combing through her hair.

He doesn't speak while he works and she doesn't either, can't, her throat gone thick and choked. And in a few minutes he's done, her hair worked into plaits down either side of her head and wrapped into a secure knot at her nape. She worries a bit of the trim of her dress between her fingers and doesn't turn around, even when it's obvious he's finished. "I want to Send to Phi and tell her what's happening," she says, her gaze fixed on her knees. "I want to tell her that she doesn't need to lead him astray anymore. That she's safe."

Terry makes a humming sound that is, she thinks, more acknowledgment than agreement, since she knows well enough what he thinks of this plan she's forced them all into. He doesn't move from behind her, though, so she swallows and continues, "You should go check in with the others, talk to Iain about his spell. I'll talk to Phi while you do, and be right behind you. It won't take but a minute."

This time, the noise that Terry makes is undeniably disagreement. "We've talked about this."

She lets out her breath, all at once. "The stones are affecting my magic. I nearly blew up the fire last night, and I didn't mean to. If I do this and I lose control--"

"I'm not leaving you alone."

"I need you to not get hurt," she says softly, unable to look at him. " _Please._ Terry--" Her voice breaks on his name.

He moves from behind her, a sudden wash of cold air across her back where his warmth had been, and she thinks he's going to do as she's asked, and thinks it's going to be terrible. She steels herself not to show how much she'd rather he stay, because if he sees it she knows he won't go at all. But he doesn't leave, just comes around in front of her and sits again, leans forward to catch her hand in his and grip it tight. "I'm _not leaving you alone._ Not today. Not with... everything." His hand squeezes around hers. "Talk to Phi. Tell her what's happening. She needs to know."

She knows he's right, and knows better than to think she can convince him to relent. Maybe she could, but they don't have the time for it, and he's right, Phi needs to know what's happening. So she shoots him a sidelong scowl, but then shuts her eyes and reaches for her magic, reaches for just a thread of it, anticipating this time the way it'll leap to her call.

She casts it out, the same as she's always done, and she feels the spell settle and take hold, waiting for her. _I Sent to Seath, and told him to meet me at the binding stones,_ she says to Phi, sending her words along that connection between them, to wherever Phi may be. _We're all here. We're going to end this. Please stay safe._

She waits for a response, scarcely daring to breathe, waits for Phi to scold her for her recklessness, or express relief, or... anything. She waits, and the connection holds, but no answer comes, and after a few moments the spell breaks, and Quil opens her eyes, gasping, and finds Terry halfway up onto his knees in front of her, both hands on her shoulders, demanding, "Quil? What is it? What's wrong? Are you all right?"

"I--" Her throat works, but she can't make words come out. She gulps for air, and shudders with it. "I don't-- She didn't say anything. She didn't answer me." She stares up at Terry, at the slow transformation that overtakes his face, confusion and fear and then, with understanding, a horrible, wrenching sort of pain that makes Quil wish she'd stood her ground and not let him be here for this, not let him _see_ this. "She always answers me."

"The spell worked, though, right?" he asks, and sounds like he's begging. "It didn't _fail._ She just didn't respond. Right?"

Quil nods, wishing he'd let go of her so that she could curl into a ball and press her face to her knees. "It felt like it worked."

"Then she's not dead." His hands tighten on her shoulders like he's defying her to say otherwise. Like she's a rock, and the only thing keeping him tethered. "She can't be. The spell wouldn't have worked if you'd tried to Send to someone who was dead. She's just asleep, or she can't respond, or--"

"Is that how the spell works?" she asks him softly, unsure. If Allan had been the one to tell her, she'd have taken more comfort in it. Allan knows the spell, but Terry doesn't use magic. Terry only knows of it what he's seen her do, and half of what she's done with it is mess it up.

"It must be," he says, firm, and changes his grip on her shoulders to urge her to her feet. "Seath has no reason to kill her now. You're giving him what he wants, as far as he knows. Why would he stay and hurt her instead of coming here to you?"

Quil shakes her head, whispers, "I don't know," and feels the futility of it. Phi is miles away, and there's a vast stretch of land and a _dragon_ between her and them, and they can't know anything more than this. That she's always answered before. That she didn't now. That Seath is coming, and they can't dwell on what might have befallen Phi, because he's _coming_ and they have to be ready.

"I'm sure you're right," she says, faint enough that she can't imagine he believes her. She lays her blankets out beside the fire again, ready for when night comes, and hopes she isn't going to need it. But it needs to look like a proper camp, whenever Seath does arrive, so she takes the time to lay it out while Terry watches her, too quiet, and then she squares her shoulders and turns to face him. "Let's go talk to Iain."

Terry nods, too quiet, too grave, and settles in at her side as they walk together, skirting around the stones to the other side, where everyone else is already awake and has donned their armor, has strapped their weapons into place. Iain has a sickle hanging at his side, Kal has a spear in one hand like the day she'd met him, and more secured at his back. Lanra has a pair of swords, Allan has his spellbook spread on his knees, his lips moving, shaping unvoiced sounds as he scans its pages. Gari has her lute, its neck gripped in one hand just as fiercely as any weapon.

"I'm ready," Iain says, as soon as they're near enough to speak to without shouting. "If everyone else is."

Kal shifts at his side, planting the end of his spear on the ground like a staff. "We should scout out the land, now that there's light enough to see by. See if there's a few places we can hide in, spread about. He's a _dragon_. We don't want to bunch ourselves up too closely and make it easy for him."

Iain nods. His fingers drum against his thigh, though he doesn't give away any other indication of nerves. "Everyone go look around, then. Find a place you think you can hide, and I'll come around once everyone's settled and see what I can do to hide you all." He looks at Quil. "You'll want to be out in the open, of course, looking like you're waiting. At your campsite, I expect, but if you have something else in mind, just let me know. I'll do what I can to keep the illusion at a distance from it, so he's less likely to see through it."

"My campsite will do," she says. "But show me where you're laying the spell, so I'll know where I can go without walking through the illusion and giving it away. I don't think I can sit still all day waiting for him, if he takes his time getting here."

Iain's expression shades with sympathy, and he nods. "I'll come back to you, once everyone's settled and I've laid the spell, and show you where everyone is. We'll want you to know that, anyways, just in case."

She nods and steels herself, and then leaves him and the others behind, to spread out and find their own places to wait. She returns to her camp and her little fire, sits down cross-legged on her blanket and stares at the flames as they lick up over the newly-added logs, and tries not to think about how much waiting is likely to lie ahead of her. If she dwells on it too much, she thinks she's likely to go mad with the anticipation.

She tries not to focus too hard on the others, moving in the periphery of her vision, and it's not long before Iain approaches her where she sits beside the fire, gives her a smile and says, "Everyone's all set, if you'd like to see."

She nods and stands, and follows Iain as he leads her around the circumference of the stones, pointing out that stretch of grass there, which is really a hollow where Lanra's lying, hidden beneath Iain's illusion; and the trees at the edge of the woods, a little ways past, where the underbrush looks thick and impenetrable, but Iain says is actually open, and where Gari is waiting. There's a cluster of boulders that she doesn't remember on the southern side of the stones, masking Kal's hiding place, and an overhang that she does remember that isn't there anymore, smoothed over by Iain's illusion, where Allan has taken cover.

They're nearly all the way back around when Iain points out a fallen log, half-buried in the earth its resting on, as though time had worn it down and slowly begun to pull it under, and when Iain points it out, she remembers that it hadn't been that way before, it had had grasses growing around it but hadn't been half-swallowed by the earth the way it is now, and so she's expecting it when Iain says that Terry's hiding there, because of course he is, of course he'd choose the place closest to her and her camp. He refused to leave her alone before, why would she expect that he'd put any more distance between them than necessary now? He's far enough away from her camp and the direction that Seath's likely to come from that the illusion might pass unnoticed, but he's closer to her than any of the others, and she's sure it's no accident.

"Where will you be?" she asks Iain, when they've returned to her campsite.

He smiles a little. "There's room enough for me next to Kal, and it'll give me a good vantage to keep an eye on everyone else, and on my illusion."

She nods and hugs him, impulsive, then sets him back just as quickly. "I'll be fine," she tells him, before he can ask, and sits cross-legged on her blankets. "I will. It's just going to be a lot of sitting and waiting, most likely, anyway."

"Of course you will be," he says quietly, and sounds a little like he's trying to convince them both of it. "And if you need anything, we're all right here. We've all got an eye on you."

She can't answer him, can't do more than nod and smile at him in thanks, and try to keep her breathing even and her hands steady as he walks away, and vanishes beneath his illusion, and for the first time it truly _feels_ as though she's there alone, even if she knows she isn't.

She waits, and waits, and waits. It's interminable, and she finds herself shutting her eyes and praying to any god who will hear her, praying that Seath flies quickly, that he comes soon, because the longer they have to endure this the worse it's going to be. _Let him come,_ she thinks, fervent, desperate. _Let him come and let's have this out for good. Let us end this, one way or another. Don't make me do this for another day._

When the sun hangs overhead in the sky, she digs through her pack and pulls out some more of the travel rations, eats them despite the slight queasiness in her stomach and tries not to think about the others and wonder if they're eating, if they're hungry, if they're restless or impatient.

When the sun is just grazing the treetops, she hears a sound, like distant wind but steady and rhythmic, and all the food she managed to choke down turns to lead in her stomach.

She jolts to her feet. Her hands shake, so she wraps her arms around her middle to hide their trembling. Her tail lashes through the grasses behind her, but she makes no attempt to halt that sign of agitation, just stares at the sky and listens as the sound gets louder and louder. She pulls her magic up and casts the spell that Allan taught her, the one for protection. It settles over her, onto her, and doesn't help the anxious clench of her stomach at all. She stands there, waiting as he comes, and reminds herself to breathe.

The trees shake and bend with the force of the air gusting through them, and strands Quil's hair pull loose from the braids and whip into her face, her skirt tangles about her legs, but the treetops hide Seath's approach until he's practically on top of her, coming into view above them, black as night, his wings spread so wide that they block out the sun, and he seems like a shadow overtaking the sky, stealing away all the light and warmth of the day.

He hovers above the clearing, neck craning to look down, and she knows when he sees her because he whips about to face her directly, his tail just missing the tops of the stones as it swings beneath him. And he _grins_ at her, as much as she supposes a dragon can grin, showing a mouth full of fangs, large enough that she thinks he could swallow her down in one gulp.

His wings beat, buffeting the clearing with their wind, and slowly he lowers himself until he's on the ground before Quil, perhaps fifty feet away, and he towers over her, almost as much as the stones themselves do, and it's all she can do not to stare up at him and weep, because how could they ever have thought that they could do this? They might as well be ants, imagining they can fight back against a bear that's trod across their nest, fooling themselves into believing they might be victorious.

"Quil," he says, and his voice sounds all wrong like this, it sounds like an avalanche, it sounds like the crack of rocks breaking in a winter storm. There's nothing left of the veneer he maintained at the palace, not like this. Not when his lips have to curl and curve to form the words around the fangs that fill his mouth, each one longer than her forearm. "I didn't expect you to find your way so quickly. I wanted to be here to greet you."

She shudders, and doesn't bother trying to keep him from seeing. What's the point? "I was close by," she says, and keeps her voice as firm as she's able. He's standing on three of his legs before her, one foreleg curled in close against his chest, and she notes that and wonders what it means. Is he injured already somehow? Her mind reels through the possibilities. This is still _impossible,_ but if he's hurt, if he can't move quite as fast as he normally would, then maybe, _maybe..._ "I expected you sooner, I'll admit. I thought you were anxious to see me again."

Seath laughs. It's horrible, somewhere between a rattle and a hiss. "I made a stop along the way," he says, and moves towards her. Even with three good legs instead of four, even hobbling a little the way he must like this, using his wings to take the weight that would ordinarily have gone onto that leg, his stride still eats up the ground between them. He takes one step, and a second, and then he's right before her, huge and looming above her. "I didn't want you to be lonely," he says, all poisoned sweetness, and even though his voice sounds entirely different in this shape from the one she's accustomed from him, she _knows_ that tone, and it makes her take a step back despite herself, makes her wary, makes her worry.

He stretches out the leg that he's been holding close against his chest, unfurls it and drops something to the ground between them, and it looks tiny as it spills from his claws, but it lands on the ground before Quil with a heavy thump, and she presses her hands to her mouth to hold back her cry because it's _Phi,_ it's Phi lying crumpled and still in the grass and Quil rushes to her, drops to her knees beside her and rolls her onto her back, her hands shaking openly now as she feels for a pulse, for breath, for any sign that she's not dead, she's not, she _can't be--_

"What have you done to her?" she demands, her head snapping up. Her fingers press to the side of Phi's neck and she feels cold, too cold, but there's a faint, steady pulse beating beneath her fingertips, and she holds onto that small, fragile thread of hope with everything she's got. _"Why?_ Did you think I needed to be forced into this? I told you I would come, I could've stayed hiding but I _told_ you--"

Seath leans down over her, over them both, his lips drawn back to bare his fangs, a horrible, horrifying grin. "Consider her a surety. I wanted to make sure you had the right incentive."

Quil moves back and _hates_ it, hates leaving Phi anywhere near Seath, with his claws and his teeth. But her pack is sitting at the foot of the blanket that she'd laid out, and she backs away until she's beside it, until she can stoop and grab it and drag it back to Phi's side. She falls to her knees in the grass and roots through it until she finds one of the bottles Iain had given her, stoppered with wax and filled with his potion and her honey.

Her hands shake so violently as she breaks the seal and opens the bottle that she fears she'll spill it all and waste it. She tips Phi's head back, opens her mouth with a hand curved along her jaw and tips the contents in and prays, _Please work, please please work, please be strong, please, bring her back._

And through it all, Seath watches her, and laughs as though to himself, and allows it. And she has no illusions about that, he could stop her with a single sweep of his clawed foot if he wanted to, he could snatch both of them up and swallow them down. But he watches her work to save Phi like it amuses him to see her try, and that makes her so, so angry.

Phi's throat works, swallowing the potion even in unconsciousness, and she coughs and chokes and half rolls over, curled in on herself, and Quil keeps a hand on the back of her neck, on her shoulder, and breathes, "I'm here, I'm here. You're all right. Oh Phi, I'm _sorry."_

Phi startles beneath her touch as though she's only just realized Quil is there, and she jerks her head up and stares at Quil, and Quil should be glad to see her moving, to see her awake. She _is_ glad, but Phi looks wrong. She looks wild-eyed and disoriented, even as she stares into Quil's face, and she doesn't _say_ anything, but she twists and looks over her shoulder, sees Seath watching them both like it's some sort of delightful entertainment, and she whips around, a low growl in her throat. Her hand drops to her side, to where her sword still hangs, like Seath hadn't even thought her a great enough threat to be worth disarming her, and she draws it and holds it readied between them, between her and the _dragon,_ and positions herself so that she's between Seath and Quil, blocking her with her body.

"Phi," Quil whispers, broken, and grabs at her shoulders, tries to pull her back. "Don't. Don't. There's no point to it. Phi, _please,"_ and Phi still doesn't respond to her, doesn't speak to her, and something's _wrong._ "What have you _done_ to her?" she demands of Seath, furious.

His lips curl again, that same, terrible grin. "Like I said, my dear. She's incentive." And he sweeps a foot through the air in a manner she recognizes from her practice with Allan, some sort of spell, and he speaks words that are strange and sibilant and make the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, and his form twists and warps before her, shrinks and compresses, and when her vision clears he's standing before them, the Seath she knows, dressed in his royal raiments and watching Quil, ignoring Phi completely even though she stands between them, even though she holds a sword at the ready and is snarling like she won't hesitate to use it.

"Now," he says. "You know what I want, and as you said, you sought me out. Will you make this easy on yourself, my dear?" And he holds a hand out to her, palm up and outstretched, waiting patiently like any night when he'd come to escort her to supper.

_Don't,_ says a voice in her head, Allan's voice, and she only barely manages to keep herself from reacting. _Quil,_ don't _, it won't fix anything._

_He's done something to Phi,_ she says back, and hopes this works like Sending does, hopes that he can hear her. _Something's wrong with her and I can't-- You have to take care of her, you have to let me--_

_I know,_ he says, and he sounds anguished, and she shuts her eyes against the pain of it, echoing through her. _Quil, I know, but you_ can't _. This won't save her._

_What did he_ do _to her? I gave her a potion, but she's not-- Something's still wrong._

_It's not an injury to her body,_ Allan says, and he sounds griefstricken, and it makes Quil want to cry all over again. Whatever this is, Allan knows it, and it's bad. _It's an injury to her mind. A potion won't help her, but_ neither will this. _Just keep him distracted while we get into position--_

_"You_ raised me, these past years," she says, her voice lifted to carry to Seath, and by some miracle it sounds strong, even though she feels as though she'll collapse to the ground at any moment. "You can't imagine that I didn't learn a thing or two at your side. Even surrender involves a negotiation of terms." _Move_ fast, she thinks at Allan. _I won't let her get herself killed for me._

Seath laughs at her, laughs like she's done something that's delighted him. "Oh, you're in no position to be making demands, my dear. You'll submit, or you'll be _subjected_." His lips curl on the last word, and for an instant she can see the dragon in him even though he stands before her as a man, can hear it in the violent, snarling timber to his voice, and she marvels at how he's kept his secret for so long.

"You said you brought her as incentive." Quil shoulders past Phi, who makes a sharp, distressed noise and grabs for her, but still won't speak. _Can't_ speak. Quil pushes that from her mind, and pushes aside Allan's voice in her mind as well, shouting at her, pleading with her. _You told me to keep him distracted,_ she thinks at Allan. _Do what you're going to, or I'll do what I must._ "If you won't guarantee her safety either way, then what incentive do you expect me to have to cooperate?"

"Quil," he says, chiding, like she's a child who needs scolding. Like she's somehow disappointed him terribly by not comprehending his motives. "You misunderstand me. She betrayed me, and I cannot allow that to stand. But I can give her a clean death, if you behave yourself. Or I can give her a lingering one. Either way, she _will_ die, I promise you that. But it's up to you what her last moments are like."

_Talk to him, Quil,_ Allan says into her mind. _We're moving into position, but we're going to have to leave Iain's illusion to get to you. Keep him focused on you, so we don't lose the element of surprise. But_ don't do anything stupid.

And Quil stares at Seath, stares at him with fury boiling in her breast, stares at him knowing that once the others get there, they'll be in just as much danger as Phi is, and she reaches for her magic and draws it to herself, draws it close, one handful after the next. The magic from the stones makes it easy, pushes it into her grasp, builds it up higher and thicker and stronger than she's ever managed before.

Seath's expression of disappointment deepens. He sighs at her, clicks his tongue at her. "Honestly," he says. "Do you think you can hurt me with a paltry spell like that? Quil, dear, you should know me better."

"I know you well enough," she says through gritted teeth. And she can see flashes of movement behind Seath, glimpses of the others moving about, approaching, Lanra with his sword in his hand, Kal with his spears, Terry with a battleaxe, his face white with fury. "But you mistake me." She piles the magic on even more, draws it closer and closer to herself, until the air around her screams with it even more strongly than it does with the magic coming off the stones. "I don't expect to hurt _you_ , no. But I'm not a dragon," she says, and finally, she sees the spark of understanding in Seath's eyes, sees them go wide, gets to witness the smug coldness shift to fear and desperation. "Try to eat my heart if you like, once it's burnt and black," she mutters, and starts to loosen her grip on the magic, feels the air around her go blistering and violent. "I hope you choke on it."

_"Quil!"_ Allan screams in her mind, and out loud, simultaneously, and Seath spins from her, snarling, and its too soon, gods damn it, it's too _soon,_ they haven't reached him yet and now he knows--

Seath throws his hands up, draws a breath, and lets out an unholy shriek, a sound like a man's scream and a dragon's roar and a banshee's wail all it once, and it hits Quil in the chest like a fist, knocks her back on her heels and knocks the magic from her grasp and leaves her gasping, reeling, her ears ringing so that she can't do anything but bend double and gasp, trying to blink the tears from her eyes and see what's happening to the others.

Phi is beside her, hands pressed over her ears and screaming with either pain or rage, and Terry, just beyond Seath, has lost his grip on his blade and let it drop to the grass as he holds his head in his hands, shaking it as though he can force the sound from his ears and from his mind as easily as a dog might shake water from its coat. Lanra's lost his footing entirely and has fallen to his knees, roaring with it, and the others--

The others look half-stunned, look shaken, but Iain's mouth is set in a grim line and he's shouldering forward as though fighting his way through a gale. Gari has her lute before her and her hands are shaking but she's plucking out a tune on the strings as though to chase away the memory of that horrible scream. Everyone else is on their feet, is still _coming,_ and Seath is moving his hands through the air, shaping a spell that's sure to be just as devastating.

Quil staggers forward, bent double as her head still reels. " _Seath,_ " she gasps, snarls it, struggling for breath between every other word. "You're right. There's no room for negotiation here. These are my terms." She forces herself to stand straight, makes sure he's watching her, glancing at her sidelong with his hands still stretched out towards the others, when she pulls Terry's dagger from the sheath at her hip and presses its point to her chest. And like that, everyone freezes, Seath staring at her like he'd gladly devour her whole right there, the others behind him motionless, their faces transfixed with horror and desperation and grief and—

She can't look at them. She tears her gaze away, looks at Seath instead, shouts to him, "Take me inside the binding stones now, and promise to let these people leave with their lives, and I'll go with you willingly. You can have what you've spent all these years working for." She bears down on the dagger, hard enough that the point slices through her dress and her shift, hard enough that it bites into her skin and she gasps with it, and Seath starts for her, as though he means to stop her. "Or fight them," she snarls, "and never know what my power might truly have done for you. The choice is yours."

"Damn it, Quil, _no,"_ someone's saying, and Allan is screaming in her head, _Don't do this, he'll only lie, it'll gain us nothing,_ but Allan is wrong. It'll give them a chance, a chance to get to Phi and help her, a chance to get her and themselves away, if they're wise enough to take it. It'll give them a _chance_ , which none of them will have if Seath casts whatever spell he meant to, and then Quil will die anyway, and what will it have gained them, then?

Seath smiles at her, slow and predatory, and there are no pretenses between them now, no veneer of civility forced upon them by the court around them. He grins at her like she's a feast that's just been laid before him, and he can't wait to gorge himself.

"You _have_ been paying attention," he says, and he sounds like she's delighted him. "Very well. I accept your terms." He lets his hands fall, lets the magic dissipate, and steps towards her. "Now, put that thing away before you do something foolish, why don't you?"

She does, slipping it back into its sheath, and she's very careful not to look towards any of the others as she squares her shoulders, and lifts her chin, and accepts the arm that he offers to her, her hand curled through the crook of his elbow. And oh, it makes her stomach turn to touch him, to even be this close to him, but she has years of practice at this playacting, doesn't she? How many nights did they walk just like this down to supper in the great hall? How many nights did he escort her back to her rooms, when she walked as serene as anyone and never showed a hint of her distress? She can do the same now. She can walk at his side and face the horrible fate that lies ahead of her and show no fear. For Phi, for Terry, for their siblings and their friends, she can do this.

Magic batters at her as soon as they step through the first circle of stones, into the wide ring of space between the two. Her own magic rises to its call, wants to burst from her and manifest as a dozen different spells at once, but she keeps a firm grip on it and doesn't falter.

They come to the edge of the inner circle, standing just between two of the massive stones that mark its perimeter, and Seath pauses in the same instant that she hesitates, every instinct she has urging her back from that maelstrom.

"Do it," she snarls at him, firming her resolve. "Lead me inside these stones. Take your victory, and be done with it."

Seath tightens his jaw and lays his hand over hers on his arm, to keep her with him. He steps across the threshold and into the tempest, and Quil goes with him, and the magic closes over her head like water, crushing her, drowning her.

It's everywhere, pushing at her, tendrils of it piercing her and twining through her own magic, wrapping like knots around her and cinching tight, stealing the breath from her lungs. And she can't help it -- despite her intentions, she fights, struggles toward the surface like anyone drowning would, pushes this strange and unfamiliar and consuming magic off of her.

It's little use; it's too thick in the air to shake free from, and every time she casts off one strand, there are a dozen more taking its place. But she knows how to manage recalcitrant, uncontrollable magic, doesn't she? She's done it for years, and it's instinct by now when another strand tries to rope around her, and she grabs onto it and _twists_ it, bends it back on itself and forces it to take a different shape. For an instant she can draw another, burning breath of air, and it's enough. It's enough to keep her fighting, at least a little longer.

There's too much of it, too many of them for her to fend them all off. A few pierce deep, and she gasps in pain but grabs at them, too, and warps them into a shape that hurts less, that settles a little more comfortably within her. She weaves a net out of them, containing her but not binding her, magic bent to the right shape that it swirls around her like a cyclone but she stands at the eye of it, untouched. Mostly untouched.

Her own magic rises and reaches for it, strains to join it, but she sweeps a hand through the air and knocks the grasping tendrils aside, and it shrinks from her. She turns to Seath, scarcely able to see past the magic eddying around her, building thicker and stronger and faster even now. But she makes her eyes focus, makes herself look past the magic and _see,_ and she sees him collapsed to one knee, both hands planted in the earth, gasping like he's in pain. And she can see the magic on him, too, strand after strand of it wrapped around him, pulling tight. He cries out, convulsing, and she takes a step backwards, away from him, into the center of the circle, into the heart of the maelstrom.

He must sense her movement; he lifts his head and his gaze locks with hers. His lip curls. "A small price to pay," he says, vicious. He pulls himself to his feet and stands there, swaying as the magic batters against him, and works its way through every crack it finds, and sinks itself deep under his skin. "It will be more than worth it when I have your heart, and have taken your power as my own. I will have what I want, Quil. And you will come to me, and let me have it." He lifts a hand, stretching it out towards her as though he means to reach across the space between them and grab her with it. "We had a bargain. I accepted your terms. You accepted mine."

She did, but she can see past him, past the two circles of stones to where the others are still moving, still coming for Seath, for them both, still _here_ even though this was the last thing she could do for them, one final, desperate sacrifice to give them the opportunity they needed to leave, and to _live._ And the idiots, the wonderful, _terrible_ idiots, are still running _towards_ her. If Seath eats her heart now he'll have her power in addition to her own, and he'll kill them all, and she harbors no illusions that he'll do it with swiftness or mercy. There's nothing at all like mercy in him, and never has been.

"We did," she answers him, and backs away another step, one more step closer to the center of the stones. "But you have lied to me from the very first moment we met, so you can't imagine I feel any shame over making you a promise I don't intend to keep."

"No," he snarls. _"No!_ You're mine. You're _mine!"_ And he throws his other hand up with the first, sweeps them through the air as he begins a low, furious incantation.

And Quil... Quil can see the pattern his magic makes, how it warps and bends and twists with each gesture and each word, as clearly as though he moved through honey, thick and sticky-sweet. She watches it build between his hands and she sees the shape it takes, the shape it's going to take, with perfect clarity. And beyond him she sees the faces of her friends, still coming, despite everything, she sees Lanra with his sword drawn and his face a picture of fury, sees Gari with her back against one of the stones of the outer ring, her face set and her lute in her hands, plucking out notes that send ripples through the magic around them. And Allan, balking at the edge of the inner stones, his eyes huge and his face grey, and she remembers seeing him like that before, when her magic had nearly set fire to the air around them both--

She snaps back around to look at Seath, at the magic still growing between his hands. It's been an instant, half an instant, and he'll release the spell in a moment and it'll be devastating, she can see that it will be, can see precisely how it will be. But oh gods, it's _easy,_ it's so easy to see the cracks in the shape that it's taking, to send her own magic out and find the places where she can work it through his and pull the spell apart from the inside, and all of the magic that Seath had been building fragments and scatters apart.

He screams with fury, and as he screams his shape changes, stretches and grows and grows and grows, turns black and scaled and serpentine until he's a dragon once more, towering over her and filling the space within the inner circle of stones.

"Your tricks won't hold out forever," he sneers down at her, all his fangs on display. "And when you're through with them, I will still eat you up, and your power will be mine." He rears back, up onto his two back legs, and begins to gesture with his front legs, voicing an incantation for another spell, and Quil gathers her magic and readies herself to disrupt it again... but despite the words and the gestures, no magic comes forth, and nothing builds between his clawed feet. There's only the stones' magic whipping between his claws. The stones' magic, binding him, and Quil remembers what Phi told her, so long before, with the river rushing all around them. _It's said they'll bind a person's magic to their physical form so strongly that even death cannot rend them apart._

Not just their body, but their _physical form._ And Seath's changed his, isn't the man that he'd been when he'd stepped inside the stones and their magic had cut through him and bound him up. And Quil laughs, a little delirious, at the same time as he seems to realize what she has, and he throws his head back and roars his fury up at the sky overhead. When he drops down onto all fours, the ground shakes beneath Quil's feet with the impact. He hunches down, ready to leap at her, and all Quil's giddy, hysterical laughter dies in her throat. Seath might be without his magic like this, but he's still a _dragon,_ and the eight of them are so, so small. _She_ is so, so small.

"I will eat your heart," he says, low and terrible, stalking towards her, and Quil staggers back by instinct, "and snap your bones between my teeth, and drink your blood like soup, you cowering, insignificant worm."

Fear chokes her, thicker than the stones' magic. He's so close and so tall above her that he's practically all she can see, and her heart cries with despair because she's going to die, they all are, even without magic he's still a _dragon,_ ancient and horrible and stronger than all of them combined.

From that moment of frozen stillness, everything seems to happen at once. Allan's voice lifts on a shout, an incantation whose words she _knows,_ and light flares from her left and three spheres of fire streak towards Seath. He whips his head around toward Allan, hissing, and jerks his wings away from their flight. They course past him and burst against one of the stones, a sudden flare of light and harmless heat. And at the same time, she can hear Iain's voice somewhere behind her, reciting his own incantation, his voice building at the same time as the pressure in the air does, and there are clouds gathering in the once-clear sky, turning heavy and dark and ominous.

Lanra's all of the sudden at Seath's flank, his greatsword gripped between both hands as he swings at Seath's leg, misses and bares his teeth and swings again, and this time his blade bites deep, opens up a red gash that immediately begins bleeding, a stream of red, dark blood that drips down Seath's leg to spill into the grass. And as Seath lashes out at him with a wing, which he ducks under and manages to avoid being swept from his feet by, Terry's abruptly there at Quil's side, looking more ferocious than she's ever seen him. He's already swinging his axe, taking advantage of Seath's momentary focus on Lanra, and the curved blade buries itself into the side of Seath's neck.

He wrenches it out and swings again, but at the same time Iain's billowing stormclouds give a deafening crack of thunder and a bolt of lightning arcs down from the sky. Seath jerks sideways and Terry's swing goes wide, and the lightning singes a wing, leaves it black and stinking but doesn't bury itself in his chest the way it would have if he hadn't moved.

And Phi's there fighting too, Phi who looks resolved and glorious with her sword gripped between both hands, swinging at Seath with all the considerable power in her, and she carves another gouge through his flesh, catches on the edge of the same wound Terry had made and rips it open wider, and Seath wheels about on her, his mouth open on a terrible, deafening roar.

He sweeps both his wings out, stretched wide over all their heads, and brings them down in a great, powerful beat, another, another, and the wind off his wings lashes at all of them there crowded around him, knocks Quil from her feet and sends her tumbling across the grass, desperately grabbing at handfuls of it, trying to keep from being blown away.

She lifts her head against the gale of it, eyes streaming, and sees half her friends fallen -- Terry, Phi, Lanra, even Kal who must've been on the other side of Seath from Lanra, out of Quil's sight, and who's now sprawled on his back at the base of one of the inner stones, his spear still clutched in his hand.

And Seath is gnashing his teeth, is swiping with a claw at Lanra, the first to hurt him. He tosses Lanra about as easily as a child with a ragdoll, and Lanra groans and curls around his side.

Quil drags herself up to her feet, equal parts afraid and furious. This _can't happen,_ she thinks, staring at all her friends lying at Seath's feet as though he's somehow already won, and she lifts her voice on a scream of fury and summons flame from deep within her, hurls it at him with all the force of her rage behind it.

He ducks out of the way and it doesn't even graze him, just goes flying over him. He snakes his head around and stares at her, the pupils of his eyes narrowed to slits, his nostrils flaring like a hound on a scent and she knows he'll kill her if she doesn't move. She spins and runs, runs as fast as her legs will carry her, and when that's not far enough or fast enough, she clutches at the magic already in her grasp, pulls at it and twists, warps the world around her so that when her next hoof touches the earth, mist rises up from the ground and swallows her, and sets her out on the far side of the stone she'd been running toward, in the outer ring with Gari and Allan both nearby and the horrible sounds of battle behind her.

She presses her back to the stone, gasping for breath, and she wants to stay just like that, wants to believe the part of her mind that insists that if she cowers here she'll be hidden, and she'll be safe. But she knows better, knows Seath was watching her and saw where she ran, can certainly guess well enough where she'd vanished herself to, or at least in what direction. The cover of the stone offers protection, but it won't keep him from knowing where she is, so there's nothing to be lost by peering her head around to see what's happening in the center of the circle, and how her friends are faring.

She looks just in time to see him swipe at Phi, his razor claws tearing through her armor as though it were paper, opening red, raw gashes that make a scream tangle in her throat, still only halfway onto her feet. And Terry moves toward her at the sound of it, so he doesn't see in time when Seath lashes his head around, teeth snapping, and he doesn't dodge away at all. Seath's jaws close on Terry's arm and he cries out, grabbing onto Phi with his free hand, and there's blood staining Seath's teeth when he shakes his head and tosses Terry away from him, and takes flight.

Quil ducks back around behind the stone, but there's little point. She can hear the heavy, powerful beat of Seath's wings, and an instant later the wind off of them gusts around her. She tips her head back, looking up, and he's just overhead, hovering in the air above the stone at her back, his burning gaze fixed squarely on her, and her mouth goes dry with fear.

Allan darts over to her, _nearer_ to Seath, and she would tell him not to if she had the breath for it. He mutters a spell, hands whipping through the air too fast for her to make out, and when he takes her shoulders between his hands, his magic pours over her. It feels cold and her skin hardens beneath it, taking on a faintly grey cast beneath the red. She stares down at it, and then up at him.

"It's the best way I have to protect you," he says faintly. "I'm sorry it isn't more." And then, with a glance up at Seath overhead, hanging lower in the sky with every beat of his wings, he scrambles back and away, and Quil's glad for it even as she feels cold when his touch falls away.

He's still too close, and Gari is too. Quil gathers magic in her grasp again, readying another spell to hurl at him, when Lanra appears through the inner ring of stones, hurtling through the air and she'd think that Seath had thrown him somehow, like he had earlier, except that Seath is still overhead, his tail lashing like he means to batter her with it. And Lanra doesn't tumble this time, but catches himself with one hand planted on the ground then spins toward Seath, his weapon held before him, putting himself between Seath and Allan, and Quil's glad enough for it that she could weep, if they had the luxury of it.

Thunder booms from the stormclouds overhead once more, and the landscape around them lights up with another flash of lightning, so close it makes the hairs on Quil's arms stand on end from the electric charge in the air. Seath snarls, either fury or pain, and Quil hopes it's the latter as she hears the sounds of the others, still fighting, weapons clattering against the stone at her back as they try to reach Seath. One of Kal's spears arcs past overhead and plants itself in the earth at the base of the stone opposite her, and she hears him swear, somewhere behind her, still inside the stones.

The tune that Gari's playing changes, a new melody stirring over the same low, thrumming underbeat, and the ripples she's making in the magic around them magnify, change shape, bounce and reflect until they're encircling Seath, tightening around him like a noose. For an instant, his eyes go white and clouded and he draws himself up, flying higher as he shakes his head and snarls, his teeth snapping on air. But Gari swears beneath her breath and drops the melody at the same time that Seath shakes his head violently, and when he cranes around to look down at Quil again, his eyes are burning gold again. "You won't hide from me _that_ easily, little worm."

"Quil," Gari calls, and there's a new, urgent note to her music, demanding attention. Quil wrenches her gaze from Seath and looks at her, her back pressed to the far stones same as Quil's is, her hand clenched so tight around the neck of her lute that her fingers have gone pale and bloodless, her face set with fear and resolve at once. "You're going to be okay," she says to Quil, with weight and magic behind her words. "We're going to get you through this."

Above them, Seath laughs, but Quil takes heart from Gari's reassurances, lets them and her magic sink into her, warming her from within. Behind her, Terry's shouting something, and there's still sounds of fighting, her friends are still fighting, and she can't do any less. She moves away from the stone, whips around just in time to watch Seath's tail cut through the air and slam against Phi, sending her staggering. Quil sets her jaw and looses the magic she's been gathering, hurls it at Seath with all the strength she can muster, flames screaming away from her, not the mote she'd used to light her fire, not the small spheres off it that she'd thrown at him earlier. She sends a conflagration to him, fire boiling through the air between them, expanding and expanding, hotter than the sun, bright enough to blind.

It flies from her and her magic flies along behind it, breaking free, and for an instant she can't breathe, old fear seizing her like claws dug into her heart as her magic slips from her grasp and tries to remake the world around her.

But she can see, this time, what it's doing, the patterns it bends itself into, can read it like words on a page, how it wants to twist her form into something innocuous, as though that would save her from Seath's greed or his fury. But she catches at the strands as they reach for her, twists them back the same way she did the magic of the binding stones, and reshapes it into a net that she can cast out, instead of being caught in, ropes of magic that whip around Seath and bind him for just an instant, so that when he tries to dodge out of the way of her fireball, he can't do so fast enough, and the spell hits him square in the face and explodes, a roar of heat and flame so vast it seems to fill the sky, and Seath _howls._

Quil grabs up handfuls of her skirt, spins, and runs again. She can't hope to outrun a dragon, she knows that, but by all the gods, she's going to make him _work_ for it if he means to kill her. She gets past the outer ring of stones, past the log that Terry had taken cover beside through the day, Iain's illusion long gone now, and it's only when she hears the heavy flapping of Seath's wings that she twists and looks back over her shoulder, to see how close he is behind her, how little time she has left before he snatches her up and ends this.

He's in flight, but he's not flying towards _her._ He's coming around the circle of stones to where she can now see Iain standing, hands raised towards the sky as the clouds continue to billow overhead. Horror curdles on Quil's tongue and she can't even scream a warning before he drops down to the ground just beside Iain, and sweeps a wing out almost thoughtlessly and knocks Iain aside with it, making room for himself before one of the gaps in the inner circle of stones.

His wings flex and his head rears back, mouth gaping wide and there's a horrible hissing, rattling sound, and Quil can see what they've allowed to happen in the instant before it does, when there's nothing she can do but give a choked cry of horror and despair, because Phi and Terry are still inside the circle of stones, still just beside one another, and on the other side of them, directly opposite where Iain had been, where Seath is now, is Lanra, the three of them lined up in a perfect arrangement that they, too, notice too late. Lanra tries to duck behind one of the stones and Terry grabs Phi and drags her back, out of the way as Seath whips his head forward and lets out a spray of stinking, dark liquid that smokes where it lands on the grass, and corrodes the metal of the armor and weapons it lands on to pitted black, and bubbles and sizzles on any skin that it touches.

Phi gets a spray of it across part of her face, but misses most of it because of Terry's quick reflexes, pulling her out of the way and putting himself into it in her stead. The acid covers his back and he staggers, but Lanra-- Lanra's not fast enough, doesn't get far enough, and it hits him directly. He drops to the ground, crumpled and motionless, and Terry gives a strangled cry and bends double before he falls, too, and Phi staggers, on her feet still but swaying, shoulders heaving and Quil is crying, is _screaming,_ fury and fear and denial all in one because this can't happen, it _can't,_ she can't die knowing that she led all her friends to their slaughter.

Allan is at Lanra's side almost at once, uncorking a potion bottle and tipping it into his mouth, and Phi's on one knee at Terry's side, grabbing both of the bottles from his belt and doing the same, one down his throat and the other down her own. Lanra comes back to himself with a roar, throwing Allan's hands off of him and rolling up onto one knee and springing from there, racing across the stone circle toward Seath as though he hadn't just all but killed him. His blade flashes, faster than Quil has ever seen him move, and most of the blows glance off of Seath's scales and skitter away, but one-- one he gets the angle just right, must get the point of his blade between the overlapping scales or in some other vulnerable place, because he throws his weight behind it and the massive blade sinks deep into Seath's foreleg, buries all the way to the hilt, and Seath _screams,_ head tipped back to the sky. He swings a massive, clawed foot at Lanra, but Lanra's already moving, already gone, wrenching his sword free and dancing away.

Kal's come around from the other side of the stones, too, and he hurls two of his spears at Seath. One sails just over his shoulder, but the other buries deep and lodges there in his flank, jutting out and swaying as Seath moves, clawing back at it, but he can't reach, and no matter how violently he beats his wings, the spear doesn't dislodge.

The clouds hanging low over the inner circle of stones begin to dissipate as Iain gestures, building the magic around him into a shape that makes Quil catch her breath to look at it. It's not a spell she knows, and she doesn't understand why but there's something about the power he's building that sends a shiver down her spine. When he releases it, a streak of black light races toward Seath and crashes over him, and everywhere it touches him he seems to wither and waste, skin cracking and hanging loose instead of stretched taught over rippling muscles, black scales fading to grey along the edges, long streaks of it like trails of ash curling across his body, digging deep furrows across his flesh.

Quil gapes, a startled, disbelieving shock of laughter forced from her. It's the first thing any of them have managed to do to him that seems like it's _done_ something, that seems like it's weakened him, instead of just made him angry. And all Quil's best tricks involve fire, which she doesn't dare keep throwing at him when so many of her friends are crowded so close, and so many of them are barely on their feet besides. But she thinks, with a certainty that surprises her, _I could do that,_ and she starts gathering her own magic to her, forming it into the same shape that Iain's had taken, thinking withering and dessication and death. And when she lets the spell free, it flies from her hands, as black as Iain's, but a black tinged with fire, and it breaks across Seath's shoulder and sends long, reaching branches of grey withering up his neck, wrapping around his throat like vines that mean to choke him, and down his leg, sapping his strength until his knee nearly gives out beneath his weight, and he only barely manages to catch himself in time.

Seath bends his head around and looks at Quil, snarls at her, at of course she was expecting that. She holds her magic between her hands, humming and vibrant, so ready for her to set it free. But before he can come for her, Iain is moving, is _changing,_ his shape transforming before Quil's eyes as he runs around Seath to stand between him and Quil. He drops down to all fours halfway there, and thick grey fur erupts from his skin until he's covered in it. The shape of his face changes, nose growing out into a snout, teeth lengthening into fangs, his whole frame growing and stretching, becoming broad and strong until Iain's gone and there's a dire wolf where he'd been an instant before, as tall as a horse, his hackles bristling, snarling back at Seath and planted directly in his way.

Seath snaps at Iain, and Iain darts to the side, but even so Seath's teeth catch on his shoulder and open long gashes across it. Iain yelps a little, the fur down his leg going dark with blood, but he turns the sound back to a growl and spins around to bite back at Seath as he pushes past, making straight for Quil. Lanra, too, takes advantage of his single-minded focus and strikes at him with his sword. There's a spray of blood and a hitch to the timber of Seath's growl, but he still advances, closing the distance between them in two great strides, and Quil scarcely even has the chance to try to scramble back before he's on her, standing over her so he blocks out the sky, so all she can see is the black of his scales and the white gleam of his teeth and the flashing gold of his eyes. Her lungs fill with the choking smell of burning and blood and acid, and she starts to sweep her hands through the motions of the spell that will get her away from him again, but before she can finish it one massive foot sweeps at her. He catches her right in the middle and his claws sink deep and tear across her stomach, knocking her from her feet, and the pain is cold as ice and then burning hot. Before she can get her feet under her again, he swings with his other foot and catches her in the shoulder, tumbles her head over tail and tears her dress, tears her flesh, and she chokes back a strangled scream.

He should have gutted her with the first blow, could've easily torn her arm from its socket with the second, but Allan's magic is still settled on her, still making her skin grey and hard, and so it's horrible, it's the worst pain she's ever known, but it's not devastating. She rolls up onto her knees, shaking from the pain, fighting back the urge to vomit into the grasses there beneath her, and doesn't bother trying to stand, just kneels there and summons magic to her, begins to build it once again, and this time she doesn't bother with Misty Step, but she gathers power to her and she thinks, _Burn._

There's movement all around her, around them both, a sudden downpour of hailstones as big as rocks slamming down around them, that only miss her because she's still on the ground beneath him, sheltered by the broad, massive bulk of him. There's Lanra, coming out of the stones at a dead run, leaping at Seath and carving a long slice down his side, and Iain behind him, who leaps onto his tail and bites deep, growls and shakes his head like a dog with a bone, and tears a great chunk of flesh and scales out, at the same time as Kal runs up beside him and grabs onto the spear still lodged in him, uses his weight and momentum to bury it deep, and Seath roars and lashes out, with teeth, with wings, with claws. Quil ducks low and barely avoids being stepped on as he twists to try to bite back at Lanra.

There's Terry, bursting through the circle of stones as though he hadn't just been unconscious a moment before, as though he weren't still marked with the burns from Seath's acid, sprinting up to grab Quil by one arm and drag her up, drag her back. _"Run,"_ he says, pushing her away, and she nods helplessly and staggers back, turns away from the sight of him sinking the blade of his battleaxe deep into the soft scales of Seath's throat, and she runs.

She can only get a short distance away before the pain overwhelms her and her strength gives out, and she drops down onto her knees again, turns back towards the fray and releases the magic she's been gathering, three balls of flame that fly towards Seath. One goes over his shoulder and bursts against the stones behind him, leaving a streak of soot across the runes, and the other goes wide and dissipates in the air overhead. But Phi's come out with the rest of them, is hurling small axes at him even as she races toward him, that go flying end-over-end and bury themselves in Seath's side, and he snaps his head around to snarl at her and puts himself right in the path of the third ray of fire, and it hits just behind his jaw and bursts with flame, scorching down his neck and across his face.

He whips back around, Phi forgotten or dismissed as he focuses his attention on Quil again. His tail lashes like a cat's, and Quil hears the impact of scales on metal, the grunts and cries of her friends who were behind him, who must've been hit. She sees Iain go tumbling across the grass, a blur of color as grey fur fades to flushed skin, and he rolls and comes up onto his feet in one smooth movement, his scimitar drawn and in his hand.

And then Quil can't see anything but Seath, over her again, pouncing on her like a cat and she flinches away, one arm curled up over her head, as though that's going to do anything to hold him at bay. He swipes at her, bats her with a foot whose claw opens deep gouges across her back, and she _screams._

He laughs at her, low and cruel and delighted, and pins her there, and it's a small mercy that that the blow rolled her onto her stomach so at least she doesn't have to see him as he bends down over her. Bad enough to feel the heat of his breath gust over her, to hear the rasping rattle of his breathing and to know what it means. She reaches for her magic, but she can't gather it fast enough, can't move enough to make any of the gestures Allan taught her, can't get enough breath to speak an incantation.

When he bites, it's sudden, even though she knew it must be coming. His fangs sink deep into her stomach, into her back, and the shock of it knocks all the air from her lungs. Her mouth opens on a soundless scream, and all she can see is red, so much of it, spreading across her stomach, staining her dress and her hands, when she pushes feebly at him, staining his teeth and gleaming on his scales, and her heartbeat is like thunder in her ears, is like a drumbeat, is all she can hear.

It _hurts,_ worse than anything, worse than should be possible to endure, and it would almost be a relief when the darkness wells up around her, stealing in at the edges of her vision, if she didn't know that this was going to mean the death of all her friends. If he ate her heart, if he claimed her power like he'd wanted... They're barely holding their own against him as it is.

Her vision is going to black and cool numbness starts to sweep away the pain, but she can still see a little, she can make out movement, can make out Terry, past the massive bulk of Seath's head that dominates what's left of her vision, Terry who's abandoned his axe with its blade still buried in Seath's neck and is running, is racing toward her, his face frantic and pale, and she shuts her eyes because that hurts worse than Seath's fangs buried deep within her, and she wishes she had time and breath enough to tell him, _I'm sorry._

*

Death feels like darkness, like stillness, like coolness and calm after the desperate chaos of battle. It feels like peace, and like the quiet, hollow ache of loss. She drifts in it for a time, while time is meaningless, and it is both an instant and an eternity at once.

And then the cool emptiness is gone, replaced by a rush of sensation, of pain and heat and cold, of the taste of something thick and earthy and sweet coating her throat, and light piercing the darkness, and the nothingness recedes until she has a form again, has limbs that she can move and lungs that burn when she fills them with air and eyes that she can blink open.

Terry's above her, is the biggest and closest thing she sees, his hands gentle on her with one cradling the back of her head and the other pressed along the side of her jaw, and there are tear tracks through the streaks of blood across his face, but he's smiling at her, is smiling and crying and shifting his hand to stroke it through her hair. "There you are," he murmurs, like she's something he misplaced and has only just found again. "It's really not nice at all, giving me a scare like that." He leans over her, presses a kiss to her brow and lingers there just a moment. His hand goes tight on her jaw before he presses his brow to hers and then straightens. "Up you get. We've got a battle to finish, and I don't care to watch that happen to you a second time."

It's a struggle to make herself move, as though her body has forgotten how to obey her in the moments she was gone from herself. But with Terry's help she manages to get upright, sitting in the grass where she fell, and then gets one leg underneath her and then the other, and she manages to kneel.

Before her, the battle's still raging, Iain hurling magic at Seath, Lanra swinging his sword as though he's not capable of growing tired, Kal gripping his spear between both hands now and plunging it into Seath's side, over and over. And Phi, who runs up to Seath from behind them, dropping her handaxes to the grass and drawing her longsword instead, and she swings just as Seath brings his head around to bite at her and her blade draws a deep wound across the side of his face, laying his flesh open from just above his burned, damaged eye to nearly all the way down his cheek. Blood makes a mess of the side of his face, and spatters off of him when he jerks his head back and swings it out of the way of her strike. And she only shifts her grip on the blade's hilt and strikes at him again, and again, and again, and each blow lays him open, each one makes the air heavier with the cloying smell of his blood. The last strike lays him open just behind the angle of his jaw, sends blood streaming like a river down his neck, and he staggers beneath it. His whole body shudders and he snarls and tries to bite her a second time but he's moving slower now, just a little. Maybe, maybe, just enough.

Magic wraps around Quil just as she's struggling to her feet, a sudden thin membrane that encircles her in magic like glass, a sphere of it. She rears back, startled by it, then reaches forward, but her hands press against the barrier of magic and it's as unyielding as solid stone.

She whips around, and she can see Allan a short distance off behind her, his face drenched with the sweat of exertion, his hands raised as he focuses on the spell surrounding her. She smacks a fist against the barrier and shouts, hoping that he can hear her through it, "Let me out of this!"

Terry lays his hand against the outside of the sphere, just opposite where her fist rests against it. "Let us do this for you," he says, solemn, his other hand drawing the dagger at his side. "Stay safe, Quil. Just let us keep you safe."

She can _hear_ the battle still raging behind her, and she doesn't dare look. Seath's faltering and her friends are wounded and tired, and she knows he'll be more dangerous now than he ever was before, now that he's growing desperate. And she _can't_ just let them do this while she hides within Allan's protection.

She looks past Terry to Allan, his mouth set as he concentrates on holding the spell. She holds his gaze through the shimmering barrier of magic and says, softly, "Let me out. Let me help." And she starts drawing power to her, building it in and in and in upon itself. "I can do this, but you have to let me out."

Allan's mouth presses thin and he looks despairing for just an instant, before he squares his shoulders and nods. He drops his hands, and the spell drops with it.

Quil spins and throws her hands out towards Seath, throws her magic out with it and this time instead of fighting her magic's urge to all go pouring out behind it, she _uses_ it, funnels it out so that it builds on itself and the fire grows out from her, bigger and stronger and hotter, until the air is thick with heavy clouds of black smoke that swirl out before her, shot through with embers that glow white-hot and dance on the winds of its own making. The clouds envelop Seath and he throws his head back with a howling roar as it swallows him, and his screams echo like thunder as he sinks within the cloud of ash and smoke. The ground shudders beneath the weight of an immense impact, and the whole clearing seems to freeze in place, motionless, as they all stand, staring at the smoke and fire of Quil's spell, waiting. Waiting.

Nothing happens. No one moves, and Seath doesn't come charging out of the clouds, angrier than ever. Slowly, her lungs heaving, Quil lets the spell slip from her grasp. The black clouds swirl once more and then collapse as though beneath their own weight, sinking down to the ground and then spreading out into a thin layer across the grass, and then dissipating entirely. The embers dance up into the sky like sparks from a campfire, and ash settles on the ground like snow, and in the middle of it all is Seath, collapsed on the ground, bloody and burnt and motionless.

Quil drops to her knees, her face in her hands, and Terry is there beside her at once, an arm around her back, holding her to him if not holding her up. She shudders and breathes raggedly against her palms. Her voice is thin and unsteady when she says, "We did it?"

" _You_ did it." Terry's palm presses to her cheek, lifting her head and turning her face towards him. His face is bright and his eyes are shining and he looks radiant with joy and relief. "You were incredible. Are you all right?"

She nods, says, "I think so, thanks to you," or starts to say it, because when she runs her hands over her middle, over the ruins of her dress that are still soaked near-black with her blood, fingers pressing through the holes to her skin, where Seath's fangs had pierced deep but which is tender and scarred but whole now, Terry makes a low, punched-out sound and cups her face between his hands, moves, and before she realize what he intends his his mouth is on hers.

His lips are soft and warm and gentle, his breath stuttering against her cheek, and a tremor goes through her. She brings her hands up to his and she grabs onto him, fingers curled around his wrists, and for just a moment she lets herself lean into the kiss, lets the warmth of it wrap around her like a blanket, like a quilt, chasing away the last, lingering chill of having nearly died.

And then she tightens her grip on his wrists and pushes them from her, pulls back and ducks her head as her eyes burn and tears drip down her cheeks. "I know I've been the only contact you've had with your wife in a long time," she says, her voice trembling helplessly, "but she's right over there now, and she needs you, and don't you think you really ought to be kissing her instead of me?"

And she makes herself stand, makes herself walk despite the way her legs shake beneath her weight, makes herself ignore the broken way Terry calls her name after her as she stumbles away, over to where Gari is slumping against one of the stones of the outer circle, and Allan is leaning beside her, looking grey and exhausted beneath his natural red tone.

"Are you okay?" she asks them when she gets near them.

Allan gives a hollow laugh. "Are _you?"_

"I think so," she says softly, though she's anything but. That's not what he means.

"Come here," Gari says, reaching for her, and her hand droops in the air between them as though even that is too much for her to manage. But Quil comes, lets her press a hand to her brow, and then down to her stomach. She hisses and presses more firmly there, hums a soft tune beneath her breath as she traces her other hand through the air, and warmth spreads through Quil from her touch, reaching deep into her bones and out into the very tips of her fingers.

"There," Gari says quietly, and gives her a weary smile. "That should help, a little. Until we can get you some proper healing."

"I feel fine though," Quil insists. "Terry gave me one of Iain's potions, I think. I'm not going to keel over now." She might, but that's exhaustion and unhappiness, not injury. "The others--"

"The others," Gari says, her voice hard all at once, "did not nearly get themselves bit in half." Then it softens again, and she clasps Quil's shoulder. "They'll have their turn, never you worry. We'll keep everyone on their feet, Iain and I. But let the healers be the ones who decide who needs it most."

Quil nods and glances back at the others, across the distance and the bulk of Seath's body between them, each of them staggering over together to embrace one another, to reassure themselves that everyone's all right, or as all right as they can be. Iain pulls a healing potion out of his own pack and presses it into Lanra's hands, before drawing out the other and taking it over to Kal. Lanra drinks it down in a gulp and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, emptied bottle dangling from his fingers. Terry stands with Phi, drawn a short distance away from the rest, and they're talking, leaning in towards one another as though, after so long apart, even that much distance is unbearable. _Phi_ is talking, and Quil's heart sings with gladness at that, even though she can't look at either of them for too long.

She moves over to the rest of the group, keeping her gaze downcast and giving wide berth to Seath's body. Lanra's on her first, pulling her into an exuberant embrace with a cry and pounding her back. "Did you _see_ that?" he demands, as though she weren't right there. "You're _incredible._ Holy gods--"

She smiles a little and lets him clap her on the back, though the force of it nearly knocks her from her feet. _"I_ was? You were _terrifying."_

Lanra laughs, dismissing it with a wave of a hand, and Quil lets him move on to the others, assuring himself that every one of them is as okay as they can be, the same as they're all doing with one another. And when she turns, Phi's there just in front of her, and Quil loses all her breath on a shuddering exhale, so that she barely manages a whisper when she says, "Hi."

She doesn't really let herself believe it's true until Phi smiles at her and says, "Hello." Her gaze drops, takes in Quil, the state of her, and her brow furrows. Her gaze is dark with concern when it lifts back to meet Quil's. "Are you--"

"I'm fine," she says quickly. "I'm fine. I've had a potion. I've had healing from Gari. I'm fine now. What about _you?"_ She reaches for Phi and isn't quite sure what she intends until she finds herself clasping Phi's hand between her own, holding onto her tight. Her words slip and twist and go unsteady as she says, "You had me worried there, for a minute."

"I'll try not to do it again," Phi says, wry. And then her smile softens, gentles. There's something almost searching when she says, "Quil--"

Quil turns away abruptly, her heart lodging into her throat. Either Terry told her and she wants to talk about it, and Quil can't stomach the thought; or he didn't but she's guessed, and Quil doesn't know how to be the one to tell her; or he didn't and she suspects nothing, and Quil can't bring herself to pretend that nothing's amiss. So she turns and she strides away. It's not a matter for her, ultimately. It's for Phi and Terry to resolve as they see fit, and besides, Seath may be done but their work's not yet finished. Hers isn't, in any case.

"Lanra," she calls, and he turns from where he's good-naturedly grumbling as Gari casts healing magic over him. "Come help me?"

His brows lift but he doesn't ask her with what, just nods and excuses himself to Gari and comes trotting over to fall into step at her side. "What are you up to?"

"I'm going to be sure of this," she says, grim. "Once and for all." And she walks right up to Seath's body and stares up at the vast bulk of it, the scales gleaming black where they haven't been rendered dull and grey by Iain's spell, or her own. The red, gaping wounds carved through him by Lanra's and Phi's swords, by Terry's axe, by Kal's spears. She stands just next to Seath's vast, leathery wings, gone slack in death and spread across the ground like a ship's sail, and she presses a hand to his side. He's warm still, but motionless, and there's a surprising amount of give beneath her palm, for someone who was so hard to touch.

"Terry said the easiest way to the heart is from up under the ribs," she says quietly, and draws her dagger from its sheath. _Terry's_ dagger, she thinks, and then turns her thoughts away from that entirely.

Lanra turns his head and stares at her for a long moment. Eventually, he speaks. "Yes, that's true." He clears his throat. "What are you intending?"

"I want his heart," she says, and presses the point of her dagger between two scales, just where the unyielding shape of his ribcage gives way to softer flesh and muscle, and she begins cutting.

"Gods." Lanra scrubs his hands over his face, then drops them and shakes his head. "It's not going to be easy this way, you know. There's going to be ribs in the way, and organs, it's going to be a hell of a mess--"

"Nothing about this has been easy," Quil says, and continues slicing, through scale, through skin, through layer upon layer of heavy muscle. "Nothing about it has been clean."

He watches her at it for a moment longer before he gives a breath of laughter and says, "Here. Let me help. You'll be at it an hour, the way you're going."

There's a fierce satisfaction to be had in this, in carving open the man who would have done the same to her, but she's not strong and she knows this is a job that's going to require strength, so she relents and steps back, lets Lanra draw his sword and move in with it. He presses the point in the deepest place of the cut she's made, then leans his weight in against it, driving it deep.

The sound of it is horrible. There's popping, snapping, the wet sound of tearing, but Lanra's more efficient about it than she is, and in a moment there's a long wound opened up in Seath's side, just below his ribs. The heavy, metallic smell of blood is nearly overwhelming, but Quil steels herself and doesn't allow herself to be squeamish. Not now, not about this.

It's hard work, and it's harder still to cut his heart out and pull it from his chest. Lanra does most of the work, in the end, and he's covered in gore up to his shoulders by the time he's finished with it. But eventually it's done, Seath's heart cut free and ripped from his chest, lying wet and almost-black under the darkening sky and half the size of a grown man.

"Stand back," Quil tells Lanra, and does the same herself, and reaches for her magic.

She used up everything she had and then some in the fight. There's little enough left, only the small spark of a cantrip that comes when she calls to it. But it comes, and she sends it out, to burst with flame against the side of the heart, then does it a second time, and a third, until Lanra gets the idea and trots off to the tree line. He returns a moment later with an armful of wood that he stacks around and over Seath's heart, making a fire, making a pyre.

Quil sets it alight and then stands there and watches it blacken and char, watches it burn, until at length the wood has burned down to embers and there's nothing left of Seath's heart but a pile of ash, still smoldering gently.

When the last of the embers go dark and the last curl of smoke twists its way up into the sky, there's a sound behind Quil, and a startled cry, and she turns to find that the massive, hulking shape of the dragon has vanished, and lying in its place, looking very small with the field of crushed grasses stretched out around it, is the Seath she had known, the king, the man, still lying crumpled and cold and dead, with a gaping red wound beneath his ribs, where they'd cut the dragon's heart from him.

She steps toward him slowly, drawn despite herself, despite the cold that cuts through her at seeing him again like this. There's an insidious whisper in the back of her thoughts that urges her to go and kneel in the bloodstained grass beside him, to press fingers to his wrist, his throat, his chest, to be sure that he's dead, that he's not going to abruptly stand up and give her that frigid smile and call her _my dear_ again.

She forces herself to stop after only taking two steps, forces herself to turn her back. He's _dead._ She killed him. He's not coming back and she won't let him haunt her.

Behind her, watching her from a few yards away, is Phi, and Quil catches her gaze by accident. As soon as she does, Phi moves, coming towards her, and Quil tightens her arms around her middle and makes herself stand still and allow it.

Phi smiles at her, a little sad and a little sympathetic, like she understands the hold Seath can have over the people he ruled. Of course she does. "Your fire's gone cold," she says quietly, and Quil chokes on a laugh. Phi tips her head towards another fire that's been started while Quil watched Seath's heart burn. It's small, set a short distance away from the other, larger one that most everyone else has settled around, tending to their own wounds or one another's, or digging rations out of their packs. "Will you join me at mine?"

Quil swallows, then nods. If Phi needs to talk about this, then it's the least Quil can do to let her. "Okay," she says quietly.

Phi smiles and lays a hand on Quil's shoulder and walks with her at her side, over to the small fire that's burning brightly against the darkness. Quil sits first, cross-legged, close enough that the heat of the flames prickles comfortingly against her knees and on her face, and Phi settles down beside her, loose and easy.

For a few moments, they just sit beside one another, watching the fire crackle and dance. Quil can't speak, doesn't know how to start to apologize, can't do anything but wait to hear whatever it is that Phi needs to say to her.

When Phi does speak, long minutes later, it's to say, softly, "I heard you, you know."

Quil snaps her head around, staring at her. "What?" She can barely force the words through her throat. "When?"

"When he had me." Phi lifts a hand, touches her fingers briefly to her brow. "When he'd addled my mind."

Quil's heart lurches painfully against her breastbone. She gapes at Phi, knocked breathless by the revelation. "You-- How-- You didn't say anything back. When you were here, before the fight, you didn't understand me. You couldn't. How could you have--"

"I couldn't," she agrees quietly. "Not here. Not until the stones and their magic broke the spell, in whatever it was that they did to him. But when he had me, when I was caught in a dragon's claws and knew only that he'd taken my mind from me and he was taking me somewhere and I was surely going to die... I heard your voice in my head. I didn't know what you were saying, but I knew it was you, and I knew what it meant." She reaches out, across the space left between them, and catches Quil's hand in hers. She holds onto it tightly, and Quil clings back. "I knew it meant that I wasn't alone. I knew it meant that wherever he was taking me, there would be friends there." Her mouth twists, her smile going wry as humor sparks in her eyes. "I knew it meant you were doing something foolish and reckless and likely to get you all killed. But even that was better, too, almost." She squeezes her hand around Quil's. "It was better to have you all to focus on, and what I could do to help you and keep you safe, than what he'd done to me."

Quil presses a hand to her mouth, holding back her horror and her grief, which are all pointless now with Phi sitting there beside her, as well as any of them and with her mind restored. "I was so afraid," she whispers through her fingers. "I was so afraid for you, and what it meant when you didn't respond. And then when I _saw_ you--" Her breath shudders out of her and she can't speak, can't do anything but shake her head, choking on it.

Phi makes a low sound and pulls her in, wraps her in an embrace and holds her close. Quil presses her face to her shoulder, to the quilted padding of her gambeson, and quietly marvels at how comforting it is to have her arms around her. Phi holds her and Quil lets out a long, unsteady breath, and much of the storm of leftover fear and despair goes with it. "I am glad you're here," she whispers, her voice wavering. "I'm glad you're all right."

Phi's arms tighten around her, an instant before she sets her back. She holds Quil's shoulders cupped between her hands and bends forward, a little, so they're watching one another from on a level. "There's one more thing," she says, and Quil's heart squeezes, hard enough it hurts.

She wants to pull away, or run away, or hide her face in her hands again, because she knew this was coming. But Phi's grip on her makes all of that impossible.

Phi frowns at her a little, moves one hand from Quil's shoulder to press to the side of her jaw. "Terry would never do anything that would hurt me, you know."

Quil's chest _aches_ , and she hangs her head, ignores the way Phi's hand presses on her cheek, trying to get her to lift it again. "No, I know, of course I know," she whispers, and she _does_. It was just the adrenaline of the fight, it was misplaced affection because Quil spent weeks speaking to him with the voice of his wife, the only connection he had to her. It was understandable that things would get muddled. "He loves you so much. Anyone can see it."

"I love Terry," Phi says, and it shouldn't hurt, but oh, it does. "And he loves me, and nothing is going to change that."

"I _know_ that," Quil cries softly, shaking her head. "I know it, I do. Please, you don't have to--"

Phi slips her fingers beneath Quil's jaw and tips her face up, even though Quil would have rather she hadn't, would have preferred to be left to curl in on herself, around the aching pain in her chest of hearing Phi talk so earnestly about how much she loves her husband. "Quil," she says, soft, insistent. _"Nothing is going to change that."_ And somehow, inexplicably, it sounds like reassurance instead of warning. She says it softly, gently, and her whole face is shining bright and glad. "Not even this. If you want it."

Phi moves so slowly that Quil is mystified, at first, as to what she means. Phi moves the way ice melts, slowly, slowly, leaning in closer. She cups Quil's face between her hands and her eyes go hooded, and then shut, and she tips her head to the side a little, and Quil's frozen even as Phi's thawing, so that her eyes are still open when Phi's lips brush against hers and she can see how Phi smiles, can feel her lips curve against Quil's own and see the way the corners of her eyes crinkle up with it.

Quil's hands tremble as she lifts them, as she curves them around the back of Phi's neck and holds onto her. Phi's mouth is so, so tender on hers, is questioning and hopeful and patient, and Quil thinks, _Oh,_ and draws a shuddering breath and lets herself dare to part her lips against Phi's, to press her fingertips ever-so-slightly against the back of her neck, to lean in.

Phi hums a low, happy sound and kisses her, kisses her like Quil's answered the question she didn't ask and she's done holding back. She's still so gentle, but now she's questing, seeking, her mouth is warm and wanting on Quil's and Quil wants to give her everything. She leans in, presses in against Phi's chest and wraps an arm around the breadth of her shoulders, and Phi makes a sharp, pleased sound, and kisses her like she doesn't intend to stop.

Quil shivers at the hot, quick glide of her tongue, the press of her tusks, the bite of her teeth, and she gives back as wholly and generously as she can, and she doesn't end the kiss until she has to, curling in to press her face against the hollow of Phi's throat, gasping there as her lungs burn for air.

Phi holds her, strokes a hand over her hair and the side of her face and all the way down her spine and back again, dusts kisses along her hairline, her ear, the line of her jaw, the side of her neck.

Quil feels as soft and pliable as candlewax left to sit too close to the fire, and she reaches in her for her magic and sends it out, thinks, _You should be here,_ and a moment later he is, footsteps loud and obvious through the grasses, pausing just beyond them. And Quil lifts her head and looks up at him, and he's watching them both, leaning in against each other like they're the only thing keeping one another upright, clasping each other close, warm and flushed and breathing quickly so there can't be any mistaking what's been happening between them. And Terry looks at them both like that and he smiles, smiles warmer and brighter than any fire.

"She's always been better at this than I have," he says, and he sits down next to Phi, in front of Quil. He's between her and the fire and it doesn't matter, she's so, so warm, she's glowing like an ember, and she only cools a little when he reaches for her and then hesitates. His expression goes a little guarded when he says, "I should say, first-- If you pushed me away because you didn't want me, not because you thought I didn't want you, or wanted you out of some sort of misguided--"

"Terry," she says, smiling, and she reaches for him, slips her hand into his where it's still hovering half-stretched between them. "Don't be daft." And she rolls up onto her knees and presses into him, presses her mouth to his, and he trembles a little against her and then kisses her back, and the warmth of them both around her keeps the cold at bay better than any fire could.

It's much, much later when they part. They're all breathing faster, and they've all drifted closer together, and even when Phi sets her back and presses a curving kiss to her temple and doesn't draw her in again, Quil still stays leaning in against her, Terry's arms around them both, and her hands are tight on the waist of Phi's gambeson, and she can't bring herself to let go, or to shrug Terry's arm from around her shoulders the way she'd need to in order to sit back.

"We were wondering," Phi says, skimming her fingers through Quil's hair, "if you'd like to join us around our fire tonight."

"Yes," Quil says at once, without pausing to question or second-guess it, without giving herself a chance to doubt or wonder if she oughtn't. "Please."

"Good." Phi's voice is warm and heavy with satisfaction, and she presses another kiss to Quil's cheek. "We'll be glad to have you with us."

"I'll go get your blanket," Terry says, and rises to his feet. His hands trail from both of them as he leaves, and Quil leans in a little heavier against Phi to combat the cool rush of air that takes his place when he's gone.

Phi holds her close, secure in the circle of her arm, and they're both quiet, listening to the snap and hiss of the fire, the murmured sounds of distant conversation from the others, broken by the occasional laugh, as bright and good as music after the horror of the day, and sometimes music too, the soft notes of Gari's lute drifting up to the stars overhead.

Terry isn't gone more than a few moments, but Quil's half-dozing by the time he comes back, lulled by the the warm comfort of Phi holding her, by the music, by how long and terrible the day was. She rouses a little at the sounds of his footsteps through the grasses, quieter now that he's not making a point of letting them know he's coming, and a little more when the warm weight of her blanket settles around her shoulders.

"If you can hold it off for a few more minutes," he says gently, with a brushing caress across her shoulder, "we'll get the other blankets laid out, so you can sleep properly."

"I shouldn't." She struggles upright, blinking away the grogginess that's pulling at her. "I'm fine. I'm not--"

"You nearly died." His voice goes tight with unhappiness as he says it, and she drops her gaze, ashamed. "And you drank a very powerful healing potion, thank the gods. But healing potions always make a person want sleep." His fingers tug gently at the ends of her hair as he pulls them through it. "You should do so, and let it finish its work. You've a good deal of healing left to do, and I'll worry for you less once you've had a decent night's sleep." He hesitates, and his voice warms with a smile when he adds, "We both will."

Phi murmurs assent and strokes her head again, her fingers scratching just at the base of Quil's horns, like she somehow _knows_ that that's a sure way to make Quil melt. "Sleep," she says, a soothing murmur, and Quil's eyes droop despite herself. "We'll both be here in the morning. Whatever it is you feel you ought to say or do, it can wait at least that long."

Quil's too sleepy and too warm and too glad to protest long. She nods and lets Phi draw her in against her chest, lets Phi hold her while Terry gets the blankets laid out, and she can't even manage a protest when they settle her down in the middle and stretch out themselves on either side of her. She wants to say that Phi should be in her place, that surely Terry will want to hold her after they've been apart for so long, but she can't make herself stay fully awake long enough to formulate the argument.

Terry and Phi are warm around her, and the blankets are warm over them all, and she's weary down to the marrow of her bones. She manages to keep herself awake long enough to feel one of them kiss her brow, then her cheek, to hear them exchange murmured whispers over her head, and then she sinks under completely and knows only warmth and darkness and the certainty that she won't wake alone.

*

In the morning there's the disorienting, heady sensation of waking with arms around her, with a head ducked under her chin and someone's face pressed between her shoulder blades, a tangle of legs trapping her own. The moment she shifts, they do too, and her morning starts with sleepy exchanges of greetings and soft touches and the weight of Terry's head on her arm, half-draped over her like the draw of them both and their bed is too much for him to escape from.

They rise eventually, unhurried about it after the urgency of the day before, and Phi wraps the blanket around Quil's shoulders and clasps its edges before her in precisely the same way that Terry had, so many mornings before, and Quil has to lean her head against Phi's chest and breathe through the overwhelming gratitude that they're here, that they're alive and they somehow, miraculously, are glad to have her here with them.

They make their way over to join the others around their own fire eventually, and there are smiles and gently teasing comments, and Quil flushes but ducks her head and smiles, and Terry and Phi both keep their arms around her more often than they don't and eventually, after everyone's eaten and had coffee, brewed thick and strong, Quil feels warm and steady enough to rise and walk away from the fire, squeezing Phi and Terry's hands before she goes.

She walks to where Seath is, still lying where he fell, cold and glassy-eyed and speckled with the dew that rose overnight. She kneels and reaches underneath him, finds his hand pinned under his side and pulls it out. He half-rolls onto his back when she does so and she thinks that the night before, her heart would've jolted within her chest to see him do so. But now she just presses her lips thin and pulls again, until she kneels in the grass with his hand in hers and can slide his signet ring off of his finger.

It sits cold and heavy in her palm. She stands, puts her back to him for good and walks away from him, back to the fire and the others still sitting around it, everyone leaning in against one another or reaching arms or legs out, everyone touching, linked together. And Quil sits beside Gari instead of returning to her place between Terry and Phi, and holds her hand between them, and quietly marvels at how easily Gari places a hand in hers, smiling and curious and waiting.

Quil presses the ring into her palm and closes her fingers around it. "It belongs to you now," she says quietly. "You'll need it, to claim his throne as yours."

Gari turns her hand over, opens it and looks at the ring on her palm for a long, long moment. At length, she reaches with her other hand and picks it up, holds it between her fingers, and then holds it out to Quil. "I think it belongs to you, actually."

Quil balks, frowning. "No, you-- You said you were going to take his place. You know how to lead. Your mother's a warlord," she says, almost pleading.

"And you," Gari says, "are the king's ward, and the closest thing he has to an heir."

"No."

"You are the one who said they won't kneel for a stranger," Gari points out gently.

"I'm--" Quil laughs, wild and desperate. "No one there will kneel for me. They think I'm a _demon."_

"Do we?" Phi asks mildly, and Quil turns and stares at her.

"It's not the same."

"It's more similar than you think." Phi's gaze on her is so soft and so kind. "You weren't there, Quil. You didn't see how people took it when I returned without you, and Seath announced that you'd died on the journey. You aren't reviled the way that you think you are." And somehow, impossibly, her voice goes softer still. "There are people there who love you. There are people there who would be glad to love you, once they're given the opportunity to know who you are when you aren't trapped under Seath's shadow. They deserve that chance."

"I'm an _herbalist's_ daughter. I don't know how to rule. I wouldn't know the first thing."

"That's funny," Gari says quietly, smiling. "Because I seem to recall that every suggestion I made, you had a better idea for."

"I wasn't trying to imply that _I'd_ be better," Quil says, appalled. "I _wouldn't."_

"Of course you weren't. No one thought so. But you would be."

"No one's going to force you," Iain says from the other side of the fire, and Quil jerks her head around to stare at him, betrayed. "But you _would_ be better at it than any of us would be. For the country, for its people, you're the best choice."

Quil shuts her eyes and shakes her head helplessly. "I'm an herbalist's daughter," she whispers again, faint, imploring.

There's movement near her, warmth, gentle hands cupping her face, and she marvels a little that she can tell Terry's touch from Phi's, already. She opens her eyes to see him watching her, smiling softly at her. "You're a dragonslayer," he says, and Quil gives a choked, wet laugh and shakes her head.

"You all had at least as much to do with that as I did. And I _don't_ know how to rule, I really don't." She hates that she can already feel herself caving, her resolve slipping. "I'd make a mess of it."

"Well." Gari tilts her head thoughtfully. "It _is_ the prerogative of monarchs to have advisors, to counsel and guide them."

"And huntswomen," Phi says with a lift of her brow.

"And soldiers," says Terry, smiling.

Quil groans and covers her face with a hand, shaking her head.

"If you don't want to," Lanra says, "we'll find another solution."

She drops her hand and frowns at him. "A worse one, you said."

He lifts a shoulder in a shrug. "You've given a lot already for this country and its people. You nearly gave your life. You don't have to give your happiness, too."

Quil presses her mouth flat. Her chest feels tight, her heart squeezed so that every thumping beat of it aches. She looks at Gari, looks at her almost pleadingly. "You said," she starts. "You said the plan was to take his place, until you could find a more permanent solution."

Gari gives a slow nod. "That's right."

Quil looks down at the signet ring, turns it over and over between her fingers. "I don't want to rule," she says quietly. "But I'll do it. I'll do it if I don't have to do it forever." She takes a deep breath and looks up, looks at each of them sitting around her. "I'll do it if I don't have to do it alone."

Phi takes her hand and squeezes it, squeezes it hard and doesn't let go. "You won't be." Her voice is firm, sure. Quil believes her, and breathes a little easier for it.

She looks at her palm, at the golden gleam of the ring sitting on it. She turns it around once more, then takes a deep, deep breath and slides it onto her finger to sit, loose and warm, against her knuckle. And then she sits there, feeling the weight of it as though it's a boulder, crushing down on her, hoping she hasn't made a terrible mistake.

Phi's the first one to take her hand, to bend over it and press a kiss to her knuckle, just above the ring. And when she lifts her head, just a little, her gaze finds Quil's and it's so warm, and she's smiling, and Quil can't help but smile back at her. She leans in for a kiss, a proper one, and there are whistles and cheers and guffaws around them, but Quil doesn't care at all.

*

It's sometime later when Quil straightens up from where she's been leaning in against Terry's side with her head on his shoulder, taking what enjoyment she can in the quiet and the warmth before she has to face what she's committed herself to, and says, "How are we going to get back? It'll be weeks by foot. We can't let the throne sit empty that long."

Allan grimaces and looks chagrined. "I only had the one teleport scroll. There's not much that I can do to help us with the return trip, I'm afraid."

Quil frowns a little. "What about a teleportation circle?"

"It's an easier spell, but it's still beyond my capabilities."

"But it's a similar spell, right?"

"It is. Theoretically. If one knew the sigil pattern of the circle they wanted to travel to."

"There's a teleportation circle in the palace," she says quietly. "I used to go sit by it, when I could get away from him, and imagine that I could just pour my magic into it and step through, and take myself far away." There's silence around her, waiting, expectant like a held breath. She glances up at everyone, at Allan. "I remember the sigils," she says. "And I saw you use the scroll. I could cast the spell. I could try."

"It's strong magic," Allan says hesitantly, and she'd get annoyed but for the way a smile breaks across his face, as slow as dawn. "But after yesterday, I wouldn't put anything past you. If you'd like to try, I think we'd all be glad for the chance to avoid a long walk home."

She nods, asks, "When? Now?" and, as though that were a declaration and not a question, everyone gets to their feet and starts moving about, packing their belongings and smothering the fire, getting ready to go. None of them brought much, and it doesn't take more than a few minutes before everyone's gathered around with their packs shouldered, watching Quil, waiting for her.

She's found a place away from the fire, and the stones, a flat place where she could draw out the circle unimpeded. "You all should maybe stand back," she suggests as she reaches for her magic, and only sighs when they all, to a one, get obstinate looks on their faces and don't move so much as an inch. "You _saw_ what I did yesterday," she says, exasperated. But she also knows what they didn't see, the moment where her magic slipped out of her grasp like she's always feared, but she was able to shape it all the same, to turn it into something else, something that wouldn't hurt her or her friends. She remembers that, and she breathes a little easier for it, and doesn't insist beyond what she already has.

She knows how a circle works in theory, knows it's more like opening a door than anything else. It's cast on the ground, not on them, the way Allan's Teleport scroll was, and so they shouldn't need to link hands the way they did before. She draws her magic up and thinks of Misty Step, the wrenching sensation of having the ground drop out from beneath her as it took her from one place to another. She thinks of the Teleport spell, the winds of magic that had whipped about them, building and building until they were strong enough to warp the shape of the world around them. She thinks of the circle in the center of the palace, the strange shapes drawn into the floor, the magic that she'd always been able to feel radiating off of it, even when it wasn't in use, and she shuts her eyes and uses her magic to begin to retrace the runes around her.

They glow with magic, with power, with promise, and when she's connected the last to the first, her magic jolts from her grasp all at once, and for an instant she panics, afraid. But it only flows into the circle, into it and into it until the runes shine as though they were made of pure sunlight, and then glow brighter still, until they hurt her eyes to look at, until the light's so bright that it spills over the edges of the shapes she outlined and bleeds into itself, and the whole circle shines fit to rival the sun overhead.

"Now," Allan says, and she lifts her head up to look at him, struggling to hold onto her magic, to keep the spell working and strong. "Everyone, quickly. That portal won't last long." And he steps forward onto the edge of that shining disk of light, and vanishes.

The others follow in short order, one at a time, until Quil's left standing alone with only Terry and Phi beside her. And they take her hands and urge her forward, and they all three step into the light together, and the world lurches around her but the pressure of their hands in hers remains steady, and never changes.

There are lanterns lighting the interior of the chamber that houses the palace's teleportation circle, but after the bright light of midday and the spell, it feels like stepping into darkness. Quil's eyes adjust themselves almost at once, thankfully, though she can see some of the others blinking and rubbing at their eyes.

And beyond the edge of the circle they're standing in, its runes dull and inert, she sees magisters and mages, men in robes bearing Seath's colors, tasked to operate and guard the circle. They look alarmed by the sudden, unannounced arrival of more than half a dozen haggard strangers tumbling out through their circle, and more than a few have spells half-summoned, ready to loose. But one of the magisters falters, a young man who'd been kind to her, the most inclined to leniency, to allow her to sneak in and stare longingly at the circle even though they weren't supposed to allow anyone in or out without the king's express permission. He lowers his hands and he stares at her, mouth agape and face pale, and he breathes, "Lady Tranquility?" as though she's a ghost manifested before him.

"Don't hurt them," she says, stepping forward, her hands raised. "I brought them."

One of the mages stares at her hand, and his expression goes in turns bewildered and suspicious and uncertain. "Look," he says to the others. "The signet." And Quil realizes her mistake, as a sudden cacophany of voices erupt around her.

One of the magisters silences the rest with an imperious sweep of his hand. He turns to face Quil and the rest of them with his spine straight and his shoulders squared, his expression as rigid as stone. "No one is allowed through this circle without a writ of allowance from the king," he says. "His Majesty is not in attendance today--"

Gari steps forward smoothly, easily. "The king is dead," she says, her voice ringing out through the chamber, and she grasps Quil's hand and lifts it high, as though they haven't all seen the signet gleaming there already. "Long live the queen."

*

What follows is a long, exhausting day full of mages and officials and a constant, deafening buzz of activity around her. She stands in the center of it all and feels like a stone in the middle of a river, the currents eddying about her, and tries to be just as solid, just as unmoving.

There are questions -- so many questions, and of course there would be. There's a seemingly-unending string of mages come before her, and she subjects herself to all their probing, invasive spells. They cast Dispel Magic first, as though they suspect she must be some sort of illusion, teleporting into the palace with the face of a dead girl, and she allows it patiently, and watches their certainty falter when the magic washes over her and nothing changes.

They cast Suggestion and ask her to truthfully tell what happened to the king, and she does so. They cast Zone of Truth and she tells them the same, and answers each of the questions they pose to her. They exchange looks with one another from beneath furrowed brows and cast Geas, and she stands before them in the dress that still bears the holes where Seath's fangs pierced through it, that's still stained near-black with her blood, and she tells them a third time that Seath was a dragon, that he'd sent her to her death so he could claim her power for his own, that she'd killed him to free her country from the tyranny of his rule.

It's one of the lesser officiants who breaks first, who falters and glances aside at his peers and then sinks slowly to one knee and bows his head and murmurs, "Your Majesty."

Some of the others hiss at him beneath their breath and wave a hand, urging him back to his feet, but he remains kneeling, and after a moment a few others follow suit, and then a few more, until finally even the last do so, grudgingly and looking reluctant about it, and Quil can't blame them for that.

She looks out over them, a dozen heads bent before her, and her stomach twists at the sight. Still, she makes herself stand tall, makes her voice be steady when she says, "I understand this is quite a shock. If there had been a gentler way to go about it, I would have. I hope you know I don't hold your reluctance or your suspicion against you. It's only right that you'd want to act in defense of the king that you serve." She hesitates, and her voice softens. "That you served. I promise, I'll answer any questions you have of me, I'll tell what happened as many times as it needs to be heard. Only, we have had a very trying few days, and if it could be arranged, I think each of us could do well with a room, and a bath, and a very large meal. And--" She glances down at herself, at the ruins of her dress. "I'm afraid I'm going to need a change of clothes."

They rise, with varying degrees of eagerness or reluctance, and set about seeing to it all. In short order, they're all whisked away into the palace proper, each of them given rooms of their own and promised a hot bath and a tray of food from the kitchens.

Quil balks when they show her to a set of doors and try to bow her through. They're large and ornate, emblazoned with the country's crest, and her stomach turns just to look on them. "Not here," she says through numb lips, and doesn't miss the alarmed glances that Terry and Phi both give her, from the positions they've taken on either side of her. "I'm sorry, I-- They're still his rooms. It wouldn't feel right. I couldn't-- I couldn't possibly sleep here--" Her voice breaks, and she stops speaking rather than trying to push through it.

There's a moment of silence. The servants who have been given charge of seeing their new sovereign to the royal chambers exchange uneasy glances with one another.

It's Phi who solves it, in the end, who clears her throat and gently suggests, "One of the suites for visiting heads of state, perhaps. Until the royal chambers can be made up in such a way as suits Her Majesty."

"Yes, of course," one of the servants says at once, and Quil can breathe again, relief washing over her. The other servant scrambles ahead, no doubt to find such a suite that isn't in need of tidying or airing out. "If you'll follow me."

Quil nods and does, and Terry and Phi both walk with her until she's shown to a different pair of doors, somewhat less ornate but still, Quil thinks, fine enough not to offend the palace servants' sensibilities at the accommodations granted their new queen. They usher her in and stand at the ready, looking nervous, as though they fear her disapproval. But Quil only takes long enough to glance around, to see that there's what's necessary, a bed and a bath and a lock on the door, before she smiles at them and says, "This will do perfectly. Thank you."

They flush with pleasure and bob into a series of bows, deep enough to startle her, before scrambling out with assurances that they'll have maids sent up to fill the tub, and mages sent after them to heat it, in short order. And still, through it all, Terry and Phi stay with her and make no move to retire to their own rooms that they'd been given.

"It will get easier," Phi says gently, when the door's swung shut and it's just the three of them, standing close in the middle of a room that's far too vast and too elegant for Quil to ever be comfortable in.

Quil turns to face her, to face both of them. "I suppose a person can get used to anything, given enough time," she says unsteadily. And then, just as soft, "You don't have to stay. I'm sure you must be craving a bath as much as any of us."

Phi glances at Terry, and smiles, and something unspoken passes between them. It's Terry who says, "We'll be glad to let you to have some time to yourself, if that's what you want. But you don't need to send us away on our account, if you'd rather we stayed."

Quil sighs and drops down onto one of the plush armchairs in the room, then immediately regrets it, considering the fineness of the furniture and the state of her dress. She stands again, grimacing, and brushes off the upholstery. "What about _your_ time to yourselves? You haven't had any at all, not since you've been back together again. Surely you must want a chance to catch up."

"There'll be time for that," Phi says easily, and moves past Quil, lowers herself into the chair she's just abandoned. Quil blinks at her, taken aback and a little dismayed, but only has a moment to be so before Phi catches her gaze, and lifts a brow as though expectant. She beckons her over with a gesture, and Quil realizes why she's done it and flushes warm. She ducks her head, laughing as heat burns across her cheeks, and moves back to the chair and slides easily onto Phi's lap, sitting crosswise there and leaning in against her, her face tucked in against her throat, where it's warm and close and comforting.

"Stay," she murmurs, brave enough to ask for it with the solid strength of Phi's arm around her back, with Terry moving over to sit on the chair's arm so he can be close to them both. "Please. Just until they've drawn the bath."

"Of course we will," Phi says, and they do, and none of them move until the door opens again to admit a string of servants and mages, all bustling about to fill her tub with hot, steaming water.

*

There is, she discovers, no end to the work to be done in leading a country, much less establishing herself as queen. There are councilors to meet with -- Seath's to start with, most of whom, she's glad to discover, seem relieved by the prospect of serving a monarch who's interested in listening to their advice; and Gari, and the rest of Phi's siblings, whose company feels like a breath of cool, clean air when the demands of the position and the work ahead of her start to feel overwhelming, and who are much more willing than the court's official advisors to draw her in for a hug and remind her that she doesn't need to do everything in a day.

There's the coronation to plan, which everyone insists is important and shouldn't be delayed, though the very idea of it makes Quil queasy. There are people to see to -- _her_ people, now, and she doesn't forget that, _won't_ forget it -- and grievances to hear, there are long-neglected matters of state to be addressed, and Quil would gladly kill Seath all over again when she learns the sorts of matters he's been letting slide, and for how long.

There's the court, _her_ court, full of courtiers and aristocrats who felt little love for her not so long ago, and she knows she needs to do something about it, to win them over or replace them with those who won't need to be, because a monarch is nothing without the support of her court behind her, but she doesn't know how to even begin to attempt to fix things there.

She's been at it a week, a week that feels like a month, or a year, or a lifetime, when a young noble lady who Quil remembers as having been presented to the court only the summer before, and who was always cold towards Quil, if not outright hostile, dips a curtsy before her as supper finishes one evening and everyone is making their way from the great hall. "If it's not impertinent to say, Your Majesty," she murmurs, her gaze downcast, "I'm glad to have you back. Glad to have you--" She casts a sidelong glance towards the chair at the head of the Table, the one Quil always sat next to, the one she now sits in. "...here."

Quil frowns at her, taken aback. And perhaps a queen wouldn't speak so plain, perhaps she'd take the compliment as it was given and not try to inspect it too closely. But Quil has only been sitting in that chair for a week, after all, and she hasn't even been properly coronated yet. And so she blurts out, unguarded and without pretense, _"Are_ you? I never particularly got the impression that you liked me, overmuch."

And the girl blinks at her, eyes gone a little wide and color burning high on her cheeks. She opens her mouth to speak, then clearly thinks better of it, snapping it shut and dipping her head again, and Quil has only been here a week but she's already so, so tired of being deferred to, as though any disagreement might earn her wrath. "Please," she says, and there's a note of strain in her voice that she didn't intend to be there. "Please, speak plainly with me. It's all right. I value honesty."

The girl's throat works in silence for a moment. She looks half-terrified, and Quil is about to relent and send her on her way when she says, all at once, "Begging your pardon, Your Majesty, but you never... That is, you were so _quiet._ You never talked with me, or any of us. I've heard you speak more in the past week than I did in the year before you left. I didn't dislike you," she says, forcefully enough that Quil, startled, believes her. "I didn't know you. How is someone supposed to feel friendly towards a stranger?"

Words push at Quil's throat and instinct tells her to swallow them back down. But she asked for honesty, didn't she? And she was given it, despite the girl's obvious fear, her pulse fluttering in her throat just above the neck of her gown. The least she can do is give the same, so she ducks her head and twists her fingers together -- on her lap, out of sight of most, where she won't give herself away, though the gentle weight of Terry's hand presses against her elbow, and she can guess that he's seen -- and says, very quietly, "Forgive me, please. This palace was always a jail to me. I never thought to look for friends within its walls."

The girl's quiet a moment. "Some of us here," she says, slowly, "came of their own accord, out of a desire to be close to those with power. But most of us were given little more choice in the matter than you were. We were born to it, or sent to it, and had to make the best of the situation we found ourselves in. Everyone knows--" She glances sidelong at Quil, hesitates, corrects herself. "-- _knew_ \--that it's taking your life in your hands, and your family's lives, and their futures, to speak against your king. We all did what we had to, to survive." There's a slight emphasis on the word _all_ that makes it feel expansive, that makes Quil's chest burn warm and tight. "There's nothing to forgive, Your Majesty," she says, brisk, decisive, and dips a curtsy and takes her leave.

Quil watches her go, a lump in her throat. Terry's hand slips down from her elbow to her hands, gently untangles them from one another and clasps hers in his own. He doesn't say anything, and she takes a deep, deep breath and holds onto him tightly. "Remind me," she says very softly, "that I want to arrange a court assembly tomorrow. An informal one. I'd like to speak with my court."

She doesn't look at Terry, but she can hear the warmth of a smile in his voice when he says, "I don't think you'll need reminding. But I will."

*

She's been back in the palace two weeks when Phi comes to her in the room that she's taken for her office, lingering in the doorway with her eyes creased with a smile as she watches Quil, bent over one of half a dozen mountains of paperwork that need her attention. "Come with me," she says. "We have something for you."

Quil smiles back at her, unable to do otherwise, but rubs a hand over her burning eyes and blinks until they focus again on the sheet of parchment in front of her. "I don't need gifts. Not from _you_ , of all people." But it'd churlish to refuse, and Phi deserves better than that. She sighs at all the papers in front of her. "Give me an hour to work through some of this, and then I'll come, I promise."

Phi steps through the doorway, into the office. She takes Quil by the elbow, turns her, bends and presses a kiss to her brow and murmurs there, "Come now. You won't be able to do all this tonight anyway. It can wait for you a little while longer."

She shouldn't. She has so _much_ to do, and precious little time to do it in, and the knowledge of how long Seath had been neglecting things weighs on her. But Phi is smiling and warm and is _asking_ , and Quil can't find it in her to refuse her anything. So she sighs a little, but smiles and lists toward her, leaning her head against Phi's chest. "All right," she murmurs. "Just for a few minutes."

Phi leads her through the palace halls and laughingly avoids all her questions about what sort of surprise she's in for. And when they come to the door to Allan's rooms, Quil blinks at it, startled, and then blinks again when they come inside and Gari's there, too, as well as Allan and Terry.

"What is this?" she asks, glancing between each of them in turn. "What's happening?"

"There is one very pressing matter in your kingdom that you have yet to address," Phi says, but she's smiling broadly enough that Quil knows she's teasing. "We're here to see that that's fixed." And she nods to Allan, who looks to Gari, who hums a few notes that make Quil's head swim with uncertain recognition.

Gari lays her hand on Allan's cheek and magic flares across his skin, like writing drawn in light, and Allan unrolls a scroll she hadn't noticed him holding and begins to read from it, and Quil reaches out to Phi and Terry instinctively, grasps their hands an instant before the spell finishes and the ground shifts sideways beneath her feet. When she opens her eyes there's trees all around her, and two bright little garden patches, and the hum of bees on the air, and Terry and Phi's cottage just before them, and Quil presses her hands to her mouth to hold back a sound that she thinks might as easily be tears as it is laughter.

Terry and Phi glance at one another, exchanging a smile, before Terry takes Quil gently by the arm and leads her over to the garden, where her bees are humming happily, finishing up the day's gathering before they return to the hive for the evening. "You see?" he says. "Look at all these loyal subjects you've left neglected. Don't you think it's time you brought them home?"

"Oh," Quil breathes, and sinks down cross-legged at the edge of the garden. Almost at once, some of the bees come over to her, hum about her in a bobbing, weaving pattern as though in greeting. She lifts a hand and a few land on her knuckles, fluttering their wings at her. "Hello, girls. Oh, I've missed you."

Terry and Phi settle down on either side of her, and Phi tolerates it good-naturedly when some of the bees fly over to investigate her. "They won't hurt you," Quil tells her. "Not unless you give them reason to."

"I've been warned," Phi says, laughing. She glances over at Quil and the light in her eyes shines brighter. "Do they do that often, or is it just because they've missed you?"

Quil isn't sure quite what she means, but before she can ask, Terry brushes a hand across her hair, and when he lowers it he has a bee perched on his fingertips, her little antennae quivering. "Always," he says to Phi, and his face is bright and loving and glad, and Quil buries her face in her hands, overcome with joy.

They sit for an hour or more, until the woods have gone dark around them and those bees who haven't returned to the hive for the night have settled down on Quil, tucked into her hair or the curl of her horns, and then Terry glances sidelong at her and asks, "Do you have enough left in you tonight for a Teleportation Circle to take us back?"

Her chest hurts at the thought of leaving so soon. But she sighs regretfully and nods. "Yes, of course. There's not much call for magic in ruling, it turns out. I haven't cast a spell in days, except for Prestidigitation. I don't know how anyone keeps themselves presentable for court without it."

Phi hums a little and says, "Gone and used it all up, have you? What a shame. What poor planning on our parts. We should have asked before we left." She clucks her tongue mournfully. "I suppose there's nothing for it but to wait until the morning, when you're refreshed." Her eyes are dancing when she looks at Quil, dips her head and murmurs, "Our apologies, Your Majesty, for this terrible inconvenience."

Quil covers her mouth with a hand, grinning broadly behind it. She wants what they're offering her, wants it so badly she aches for it. But she sighs and makes herself shake her head, makes herself say, "Thank you. So much. But there's work I need to get back to."

"There is," Terry says gravely, and gets to his feet, urging her up to her own. "Very important work that can't wait a single moment longer than it already has. And we've gone and kept you from it. How thoughtless of us." Phi gets to her feet with them as well, and together they usher Quil towards the cottage.

She lets them, laughing, and only pauses at the door long enough to send the last, lingering bees off to rejoin their hive. And then they're pulling her inside, into the small space that's still half-ashambles the way it was when they left it in such a rush, those weeks before. It felt cramped before with all of them crowded in here, and then somehow too empty, after Iain and Kal left. And now with the three of them, with Phi turning down the blankets and Terry helping Quil with the long row of buttons down the front of her gown, it feels perfect.

They urge her into the middle, pressed in close on either side of her, and Phi grabs the quilt from the foot of the bed and shakes it out over the three of them, and Quil pillows her head on Terry's shoulder and pulls Phi's arm around her waist, and is asleep almost at once, sinking deep into a warm, hazy slumber.

In the morning there will be work to do, to collect the hive and ready it to be moved, to make sure that none of the bees are left behind, to get them established and happy somewhere in the palace, where there will be plenty of flowers for them to gather their nectar from. But for now, they've seen to it that she has nothing at all to worry about until dawn, and it's a better gift than she could have ever hoped for.

*

Her coronation seems to take forever to organize and plan, and yet is upon them all at once, and Quil finds herself sitting on the edge of her bed on the morning it's meant to happen, her stomach tying itself into queasy knots. There's a part of her, a large part, that wants to run. There's magic prickling at her fingertips, asking her to use it, magic that could take her far from here in an instant.

She breathes through it, and stands, and dresses herself without waiting for a maid, in the simplest dress she owns. It's still far nicer than anything she'd ever owned before, even as Seath's ward, and not something she'd ordinarily have risked with a walk. But, well, there's Prestidigitation now, and if it comes to it, there's Mending, too.

She lets herself out of her rooms and walks through the palace halls with quiet steps. Normally, it would be early enough that she wouldn't find anyone else awake at such an hour except, perhaps, the odd maid or manservant or two. But today there's much to do, and much to be ready for, and the halls are already bustling with activity.

Those servants who pass her blink at her, as though startled to find her awake so early, though it's obvious most of them have already been up for hours. She waves off the exclamations and offers of a bath or a meal sent to her room, the apologies for not having somehow known that nerves would have her rising early and roaming the halls. "Please," she says, "you already have so much that's being asked of you today, I'm not about to ask more of you. There's nothing that I need, thank you." And they blink at her, a little startled and a little dubious, and some of them flush as though unexpectedly moved to have had their labor acknowledged.

She finds her way out to the palace courtyard, to the copse of trees that had been her refuge once before, whose branches had been twisted and blackened until Iain had spent a full day, a few weeks earlier, sitting out in the middle of them, meditating and pouring his magic into the ground around him, until the earth was soaked with it and the charred, barren branches over his head had erupted with leaf buds and soft, fragrant blossoms, though it was entirely the wrong season to be in bloom.

Now, there's a little bush sitting at the base of the trees, its branches woven to make a shelter at its heart, and her bees flit from flower to flower, filling the air with their humming song.

Quil settles onto the bench and watches them work, smiling softly to herself. And when a few come over to her to say hello, as they always seem to, she lifts her hands to give them a place to rest, and she whispers the news to them, as is only right. And somehow, telling them makes it settle a little more squarely in her chest, makes it easier to breathe around the weight and the shape of it all.

_I'm going to be queen_ , she tells them, and telling them makes it feel true, makes it feel possible. _I'm going to try to be good_.

Terry finds her there, at a somewhat more reasonable hour of the morning. She glances up from disentangling a bee from the trim at the neck of her dress and he's there, leaning against one of the trees, watching her with a smile hovering about his face. "I thought we were very clear," he says when he sees she's noticed him, laughter lurking in his voice, and he comes forward. "Today is not a day for working."

She smiles up at him and pats the seat of the bench beside her, and he comes and sits with her, warm against her side. "This isn't work." When she lifts her hand, he raises his own, and lets the bee on her knuckles walk across onto his. "It's the farthest thing from work."

He sits with her a while, watching the bees fly about them, and the silence between them is easy and comforting. Eventually he moves, glancing down at her hand where it lies on her lap -- ensuring there aren't any bees there that he'll disturb, she realizes, and beams at him helplessly -- before he takes it in his own. "Come back inside," he says. "They'll need your presence soon, and we want a moment with you, before they whisk you away on official business."

She'd stay out there until dusk chased all the bees back into their hive, and her back into the palace, if she could. But of course, she can't, on today of all days, so she stands, and keeps her hand in his, and walks back into the palace with him without letting go.

He takes over, a little, once they're back inside, and guides her through the halls back to her own rooms, as though she doesn't know how to find them on her own. She laughs up at him as she lets them both in, and then turns, so she's halfway inside the room when she realizes it isn't empty, and she stumbles to a stop.

Phi's there, which is no surprise, but so is everyone else, Kal and Iain and Lanra and Allan and Gari, and it's only then that Quil realizes that when Terry said _we_ , he may have meant more than just himself and Phi.

She beams at them, and rushes forward to embrace them all. And she asks, "What are you all doing here?" because it's obvious that they've come for something more than just to say hello to her before her coronation.

It's Gari who says, "We have something for you," firm, as though she's already expecting Quil's protest. "Well-- That is to say, we had some influence in it, and we managed to convince your officials to allow us to be the ones to present it to you."

Quil presses her hands to her mouth, staring at them all over the tips of her fingers. "I don't need gifts," she whispers, already overwhelmed by the very thought of it. "You didn't have to. You shouldn't have."

"Of course we didn't have to," Phi says, brisk, and comes forward to lay a hand on Quil's shoulder and guide her forward. The rest of them part for her, and Phi shows her to the bed, where there's a large, flat box laid out upon it. "Go on," she urges softly. "We're all very anxious to see what you think."

Quil reaches and draws the lid off, revealing within a gown made from cloth of gold, worked into a brocade design of leaves and vines and flowers. And, she realizes when she reaches with unsteady hands to lift the gown from its box, dotted with bees hiding amongst the foliage.

It's the loveliest, most ornate thing she's ever seen, and she wouldn't even dare to touch it if it weren't for the fact that every detail draws her in, makes her press a palm to her mouth and blink back overcome tears. There's a honeycomb pattern worked into the trim down the gown's front, and along its hem, and the train is fashioned in such a way that, when it moves beneath the light, it gives the impression of flames flickering and dancing across the garment. There are clusters of sweetclover blooms interrupting the pattern of the design, a curving arc of them across the bodice of the gown. Quil touches her fingertips to each of them, and at the same time the fingers of her other hand press to her side without her meaning to, marking each of the scars she still carries, that she'll always carry.

And now here they are, woven in gold and sewn into her coronation gown, so that she'll stand before her people and she'll glow like honey fresh from the comb, she'll wear the proof of her pedigree emblazoned for all to see, transformed as though by magic from her lowest moment of despair into a badge of strength and determination and pride.

She's weeping and she shouldn't, she knows she shouldn't, it'll only make the work of her maids more difficult when they come to get her ready for the ceremony. But she can't help it, the tears flow freely down her cheeks and she turns, looking at each of them, wondering which of them she should blame for such incredible thoughtfulness. But they're all of them looking varying degrees of nervous and hopeful, and she can't cope with the thought that they _all_ did this for her. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," she says brokenly, in between sniffles. "How can you expect me to _wear_ it? I feel like I'll ruin it if I _touch_ it."

"You'd better wear it," Phi says, grinning at her. "We all put a lot of work into the design. It'd be a shame to waste it."

"I'll never want to wear anything else," Quil protests, and they all laugh, their faces brightening, nerves giving over to relief.

Her maid comes, then, knocking quietly on the door and murmuring an apology for the interruption, but reminding her that the hour in which she'll be needed is approaching, and everyone makes their farewells, drawing Quil into one embrace after another, and she hugs each of them tightly and whispers her thanks into their ears. And then they're gone, and her maid is waving in a small army of underservants, and Quil stands and lets them strip her down her shift, lets them help her into her coronation gown. The weight of it sits heavily on her shoulders, sobering, but she runs her hands over the cloth, walks her fingers along the flowers that they've made of her scars and thinks of them all with their heads bowed together in deliberation on this, choosing clover flowers because of how bees favor them, choosing flame, ensuring that even now, her bees will be with her.

"Ready, Your Majesty?" her maid asks her, when they've clothed her and brushed and dressed her hair, working it up into an intricate nest of braids and tucking flowers in amongst the plaits, flowers that match the ones on her gown but that smell fresh and green and real.

"I'm ready," she says, and is quietly surprised to realize that it's true.

*

Afterwards, there's feasting, and after the feasting, someone organizes the guests to push the tables to the edges of the great hall, someone who Quil harbors a sneaking suspicion is Lanra. And then Gari is climbing up to stand on one of the emptied tables, her lute in her hand, and there's music and singing and, inevitably, dancing. Quil stands on the edges of it all, smiling so broad that her face hurts, watching her friends and her court and her people swirling across the floor with one another, bright and joyous in their celebration.

She turns, sometime into the third dance that Gari has led them all into, and is unsurprised to find Terry there at her elbow, is more than a little surprised to find him watching her instead of the dancing. As soon as her gaze catches his, he holds a hand out to her, and bows low before her, and her breath catches in her throat as she realizes what he's going to ask, the instant before he says, "Will you join me?"

There's only one answer to give. She places her hand in his and lets him guide her out amongst the others, lets him take her in his arms and only laughs quietly when he draws her in closer than propriety dictates, closer than anyone ought to dare with their new-crowned queen.

Quil wraps her arms around his neck and leans her cheek against his chest, and lets the gossip-mongers whisper what they will. Terry's hands are warm on her, his touch as sweet and decadent as warm honey, fresh from the comb. They dance, they don't do more than dance, but Quil's breath hitches from the closeness, the warmth, the graze of Terry's lips against the side of her throat when he dips his head to murmur to her that she looks beautiful. She wouldn't ever let him go, except that when he dances her to the edge of the crowd and edges back out of her embrace, it's only so that Phi can step into his place.

Quil beams up at her, and Phi presses a hand to the small of her back an instant before she sweeps her onto the floor in a swirling, energetic dance, an instant before the song that Gari's playing transitions smoothly into a bright, fast-paced reel, and Quil tips her face up to the ceiling high above her, and lets herself be swept about, and laughs bright enough to fill the rafters overhead.

Afterwards, she retires back to her chambers and collapses into the armchair, her skin abuzz with the giddy joy of the evening. When she's caught her breath, her pulse steadies but her stomach still flutters with nerves, with worries.

All evening they danced with her, swept her back and forth between them until she was dizzy with it, and there was warmth in their touch, a sparking promise in their eyes. There was Terry pressing a kiss to the back of her hand and lingering there, his gaze shuttering for just an instant before he relinquished her to his wife. There was Phi, drawing her in, holding her close, urging Gari to play one energetic dance after another, as though all she wanted was Quil breathless in her arms.

Perhaps, she thinks. Perhaps they won't come. Perhaps she'll fall asleep in the chair waiting for them, and wake in the morning with a crick in her neck and cold disappointment in her stomach.

When her breathing has steadied a little, if not her nerves, she rises, untangles her coronet from her hair and leaves it on the table beside the chair and goes to the writing desk in the corner of the receiving room, laid out with paper and ink and a fresh quill. She sits there and skims her fingertips over the smooth, even texture of the paper, willing herself to breathe through the nerves, and then she dips the quill in the bottle of ink and writes, smooth and decisive, _Dear Mama_ , across the top of the page.

It's easier to continue, once she's started. Her hand steadies a little as she writes, and the words come smoother, come quicker. She's filled three pages, nearly, when there's a quiet knock at the door and she abruptly sets the quill aside, so she won't ruin the pages with ink spattered across them.

She rises and leaves the letter behind, to finish later. She goes to the door, opens it and breathes easier all at once to see Phi and Terry on the other side, both of them smiling at her, both of them looking a little anxious as well, and it's a relief at least to know she's not alone.

"How are you?" Terry asks, reaching out to her, brushing the backs of his fingers across her cheek. "How are you really?"

_I feel as though I'm in a dream_ , she thinks, but doesn't say. Instead, she takes one of their hands in each of her own and draws them in, smiling. "I was hoping you would come," she says. "I'm glad you're here."

It makes them both smile, makes the set of Phi's shoulders ease and some of the shadowed uncertainty in Terry's gaze recede.

"Come with me," she says, drawing them back, through the receiving room, through the doorway, into the bedchamber. She draws them to the bed, sits on the edge of it and tugs them closer still. "Come, please. Come to bed with me."

Phi grazes a hand over her cheek, slides it up into her hair to sift through the strands there and press warm to the back of her neck. "Are you tired?" she asks. "You've had a long day. Anyone would be."

And Quil smiles up at her, her heart so full and so glad that it seems it couldn't possibly contain it all without bursting. "No," she says, and pulls them down onto the bed, tumbles into it with them, and her laughter rings bright and clear, and their own rises up to join hers. "Not in the least."


End file.
